The Revenger
by wryter501
Summary: Revenge was a marginally legal business, and Merlin had been taught never to work for free. But this time pay didn't matter; this time it was personal. As an agent of the law, will Arthur aid Merlin in seeking justice for the man who killed his family, or arrest him for attempted murder? A/U, and pretty far! No slash, Freylin and other pairings (canon and otherwise).
1. Then and Now

**The Revenger**

**Prologue – Two Years Ago**

He stood ankle-deep in the crooked furrows he'd plowed in his father's field – just yesterday, yesterday when he wasn't a murderer – and watched his house burn.

His house, not his home.

It had ceased to be that when his family had left, a hollow mockery of safety and love, when blood whispered of abandonment and guilt from floorboards that never could scrub clean. When father and mother and little sister and baby had all become hollow shells themselves, empty and lifeless.

The fire roared in the night, crackling useless fury in waves of heat against him. It smelled of kerosene and ash and sweat and blood, coppery-sour like fear and desperation and loss – or maybe that was just him.

He couldn't smell the spring, anymore. The new life. The land after the last snowfall. The freshly-turned earth… that would never receive the seed, never cover the semblance of death only to burst forth in exponential new growth.

Dead was dead.

They'd taken even the bodies from him, the empty husks, and planted them in rows like seeds. Where nothing would grow or return but the grass.

The home, he thought vaguely, should have been buried too. Dead, like his family.

Like his heart, like his hope.

Only he couldn't figure how to manage that. Any more than he had managed to bury the body of the one who'd made him a murderer. That place, he'd fled in a blind panic, nauseated by his own evil. To retrace the path, to return here…

And because he didn't know how to bury a home, he'd burned the house that mocked it in representation. No one's home. And never would be.

His hand trembled at his side, the one that still had blood on it. Not his blood. He didn't look away from the conflagration of his life, but rubbing his hand on his trouser leg did nothing to still the tremor.

The leaping red and orange and yellow and white flames, fluttering licking through upper windows and outer walls – and a section of the roof collapsing in a shower of sparks and a wave of blistering heat –

"I'm sorry," he said out loud, and meant it.

The agent sent from the capital to collect the orphan boy that no one wanted was not to blame. Only doing his job. Perhaps the man should not have tied him, slung him over the horse's saddle to fulfill his mission, perhaps he might have tried to listen and understand.

The corona of glowing light around his doomed house reminded him a bit of the agent's blonde hair. And a remote part of his mind supposed that the agent was quite a young man, himself. It was a pity. He hoped the agent had not had a family…

It was his fault, he knew that, he didn't hide from the fact. All his fault. One ought not resist an agent, an officer of the law.

No matter that it had scared him spitless to be taken forcibly from his father's empty land, empty house. No matter that – once the break was made – he'd realized that he couldn't rest until the murderer was found and punished. No matter that the thought of three years as one of the many wards of the government clenched his heart and throat like a fist like the murderer's own fist.

Unbearable. He would be insane by the time of his coming-of-age emancipation. If he lived that long.

No matter that he'd panicked blindly when the agent caught him slicing through the rope binding his ankles with his hidden boot knife the first night.

He ought not have stabbed him.

It was wrong, and he was sorry for it. Too late.

Because the first man he killed ought to have been his father's killer. The man whose death made him a murderer ought to have been the man who murdered his mother and baby sisters.

So. Much. Blood.

He put his trembling hand up to his face to shield himself from the heat, drying his skin, crackling and blackening. Even though he deserved it, and more.

Because this was his fault, too.

Because he wasn't the sort of son who enjoyed lightening his father's load of chores, working alongside him, absorbing criticism and correction – endlessly spoken with such _disappointment_ – with good-humored cheer. Because he wasn't the sort of son to listen and obey when his mother called after him, _Come back here, where are you going we've got company…_

He was alone, now. Just as he'd wanted to be, that night. It was his fault. If he'd stayed… it might not have happened. But he was too late.

If he had stayed to defend his home and family instead of seeking solitude for his confusion and perpetual inadequacy. This fire might be deadwood cleared from the land, last autumn's leaves burned before being raked across the field to nourish the soil. With his two little sisters dancing in gleeful abandon around the edges of the heat, and his mother tucking a shawl around her elbows to stand for a brief moment of inaction to watch the mesmerizing play of flames. And his father clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder in a rare show of comradeship rather than authority, passing him the fire-tending hoe before circling to take his mother in his arms and murmur to her about the land they worked and the family they raised and the home they built…

The rest of the roof crashed in, and a cloud of sparks and smoke billowed outward. He stumbled backward two steps, a concern of discovery touching his heart for the first time.

Was it late enough that no neighbors would notice until the morning, what he'd done? Or would they come, heedless of the hour? He couldn't be here when that happened.

As a murderer, his life was forfeit. That was just; he didn't mind the thought. He accepted the truth – he ought to be dead. He was a murderer. And before that, at the very least, he ought to have died with his family.

But. For now, he had to live. At least long enough to find the one responsible for the deaths of his family, and kill him. And his family.

Revenge. There was no one but him to accomplish it.

And that meant he needed to survive. For now.

Blind in the darkness – though it didn't matter, which direction he chose, he had nothing to go on, no name no face no motive to identify the stranger the murderer – he turned his back on the blaze of light, the pyre of his life.

And Merlin began to walk.

…**..*…..**

**A/N: Oh, I know. An author's note in the middle of the chapter? Sacrilege. But I don't like to excuse my story before giving the writing a chance to speak for itself (more or less), also I don't think it quite fair to string more selective readers along under false pretenses…**

**This is going to be the furthest A/U from canon that I've ever posted, due to the fact that this is an adapted original. To keep something Merlin going while I'm finishing my NaNo '14 original. So.**

**Warnings: No magic. A pseudo-western – which means, no spinning six-shooters or jingling spurs. Just the setting and costume. Focus mainly on Merlin (a bit darker than his character normally is, but hopefully I've set that up to be understandable), Freylin; though Arthur! of course! and other characters will be included, don't assume that motivation/relationship will be the same as in-canon. Some OOC-ness for them, and lots of OC's, just because I don't want to replace every character with a name from the series. Got that? Still with me? Good!**

…**..*…..**

**Chapter 1: Welcome to Emmett's Creek**

He slumped in the saddle, his chin nearly on his chest as he tilted his broad-brimmed hat against the blood-orange sun swimming hazily on the western horizon, straight ahead of him.

It didn't matter. His nag had at least enough sense to put one foot in front of the other, and on the road, even if it was – he grunted to himself in a sort of grim surprise to realize it was entirely possible – as old as he was. Didn't matter. He might have been able to afford better, if he'd been willing to stay in one place long enough to earn the coin. Which he wasn't. There again, didn't matter.

Speed was not important, not when he was only following a name. But anonymity was. And that he had achieved, with his worn clothing and tired old nag. Completely forgettable.

Merlin swayed in the saddle against a dizzy spell. Combination of factors, he realized distantly. Not the best kind of food or sleep, and not enough of either. He'd been pushing himself too hard, for too long.

He was alert enough to realize that the land sloping away from the road wasn't untamed wilderness, but tended meadow. Without looking up, he was aware when that gave way to orchard… and field. And when the nag picked up its heavy hooves and he did raise his head, he wasn't surprised to see the town laid out before him.

Well. At least he wouldn't need to scavenge crumbs from his saddlebags and pillow his head on the leather for a few hours another night. He thumped his heels against the nag's bony ribs to encourage it to walk even faster.

He kept his head down, innocuous and forgettable, as the road entered the town. To his left, two little girls skipping rope on the boardwalk under the overhang giggled and darted through a shop door at a woman's call from inside – his breath caught painfully in his chest. He never could see two little girls playing without thinking of – no.

Next door, a portly man in a white apron swept his section of the boardwalk. A dust-colored dog on the ground half-underneath the weathered plank walkway lifted its head and sneezed wearily.

The reeve's office. That interested him more; he bent to look through the window as the nag ambled past, but it appeared empty, unlit. An outside stair rose toward the rear of the building, leading to an entry on the second floor, but the windows there were dark as well.

On his left, a curiosity. A building separated from its neighbors by a narrow alley on each side, walls and windows soot-blackened, though still stable and usable. The roof was fresh-sawn lumber, waiting for shingles. A fire. But one which hadn't spread… he wondered what sort of business it was; not a home, to have frontage on the main Street.

And nearly to the far edge of town, the livery and forge next to each other on his right, and what was clearly a tavern – _Percy's Place_ stenciled over the large plate-glass window – on the left. It looked a lively place – crowded movement visible, boisterous noise faintly audible - and he knew of nowhere better to begin, in a new town.

He shifted in the saddle to dismount and paused. Did he know the name of the town? Had anyone mentioned what to expect, and he'd forgotten? Or had he looked at a map and neglected to read it? He shook his head at his lapse. Maybe it didn't matter, but it made him feel a little lost, to be unaware of where he was in the larger landscape. He shook his head again – too much sun today, maybe. And not enough water.

There was a young boy at his stirrup when he dismounted to loosen his saddlebags, dark-skinned and serious and silent, reaching for the nag's lead.

"Your father run this place?" he said, jerking his head to indicate the livery stable.

"He's at home for dinner," the boy said softly. "Any special orders for your horse?"

"No." Honestly, he didn't think it would bother him much if the old piece of horseflesh turned up dead in the morning. Or surprise him, either. "Let your father know I'll be by in the morning to settle the account." The boy nodded, and Merlin crossed the dusty street to the tavern.

The last rays of the setting sun hit the pane of glass as he stepped up on the boardwalk, settling his saddlebags over his shoulder, and he paused at his reflection.

He could've passed for a scarecrow, body and clothing. Only the painted-burlap face of a scarecrow never was that hard and haunted. A thought struck him breathless - if he had arrived at the farmhouse, looking as he did now, his mother would have hustled his baby sisters inside. Locked the door. His father maybe lift the machete down from its nail in the barn before coming to ask him his business.

Merlin shook his head. If this was what it took to achieve his revenge, so be it.

He opened the door enough to slip through, his back to the wall, scanning the room and its inhabitants in an instant, as he'd been trained. Immediately in front of him, a round table, four men playing cards. The one on the right, red shirt and brown vest, black broad-brimmed hat though he was indoors, was the reeve, the identifying shield pinned ostentatiously to his vest.

"Look at that, Whatley," the man facing him said, rather nervously, "Three fives!" The reeve threw down his cards in dissatisfaction.

Straight ahead on the left wall, an L-shaped bar open to a door in the corner. A handful of stools clustered crookedly to the narrow ledge, glasses and mugs displayed on shelves behind the biggest bartender Merlin ever seen, with closely-cropped brown hair and his shirt-sleeves rolled up over bulging muscles. He flipped a rag over his shoulder to pour alcohol into the last glass on a small round tray, while a brown-skinned girl with curly black hair pinned up haphazardly and a longsuffering expression waited.

Further into the room, tables and chairs, more or less occupied. Townfolk. No threats. Along the front wall to his right, an opening – to the stairway, he assumed. Upstairs bedrooms. Toward the corner opposite the front door there was a fiddler, with more enthusiasm than talent, a trio of rougher-looking men aiming darts for a board on the wall on the far side of the fireplace, not in use on a mild spring night when the press of bodies and the heat from the kitchen was sufficient to warm the room.

He slipped past the table and slouched sideways on the stool nearest the wall, letting his saddlebags slide down his left arm to rest on the bar, keeping his back to the wall.

"What can I get you?" the bartender asked, friendly enough – but then again, it was in his business' best interests to be. He wondered briefly if this was Percy.

"Just water." At the big man's raised eyebrow, he added, "For now."

"Hey, stranger." He only had to turn his head a few degrees to see that it was the reeve who'd addressed him, sitting back in his seat as one of the others dealt the next hand. "What's your name? Your business?"

This, too, was in the reeve's best interests, as far as his job went. Nothing unexpected, even. Merlin only twitched his shoulders in a slouching shrug. Harmless drifter. No one to give a second thought or glance to.

"You mind your business, stranger," the reeve continued, "and our law here in Emmett's Creek, or you may find a blade tickling your ribs."

He shrugged again. He had no intention of breaking the law, here or anywhere else. The revenge he sought was perfectly legal. A life for a life, taken by the next of kin. He only had to make sure of his target, first. The reeve nodded like he was satisfied his warning had been received, and picked up his cards.

Beyond the bartender the door swung open on a double-hinge, and an amply-built woman in a pink dress swung a long auburn braid over her shoulder as she turned, red-faced and thick-armed, to hoist a large cookpot onto the corner of the bar with a clatter of glasses and shiny copper lid, then beamed at the crowd, at once the center of attention.

"Soup's up!" she proclaimed, in a voice that had no trouble reaching the far corners.

She was trailed by a skinny kid of a girl in a shapeless baggy dress, dark hair covered by a drab kerchief and eyes dropped in a habitually shy way, clutching a stack of wooden bowls to her chest. The bartender side-stepped to help ladle out the stew – which smelled delicious and woke Merlin's salivary glands. His stomach pinched, and he focused on the warmish water in his cup.

Having eliminated the likelihood of threat, he relied on his ears more than any other sense, listening _listening_ for the one name he sought. For the first night this was best. Asking questions betrayed interest, and a murderer was the sort of person to pay attention to strangers asking questions. Tomorrow, maybe, he could begin to initiate conversation, casually, unsuspiciously, to see if finally, this was the town he sought. Emmett's Creek. The home of the man he wanted to kill?

A skirt shuffled into view, as though the shoes hidden by it were too big on the feet. A baggy, drab skirt. He lifted his eyes to the steaming aromatic bowl of beef stew she offered – generous chunks of meat, floating slices of last fall's carrots, maybe a piece of potato or two from a root cellar. He swallowed, but made no move to take it.

"I didn't –" he began.

"Shasta says it's on the house," she said, her low voice almost musical. She hitched one shoulder toward the plump woman presiding over the soup-pot.

"You take it!" the red-haired woman hollered over to him, ladling someone else's bowl full. "You look like you need it!"

"I do not take charity," he told the girl stonily.

She shifted her weight uncertainly, but didn't retreat, only raised her eyes to his – dark eyes, and long lashes. And he found himself reaching for the bowl with an impatient sound, taking it out of her hands and shoving it onto the bar next to him. The ghost of a smile crossed her face, and as she turned his attention flicked up over her shoulder.

As one of the dart-throwers - a paunchy, grubby, middle-aged man with grizzled hair and whiskers – face darkly twisted with jealous fury, leaned into his throw.

Merlin reacted without thinking. One step brought him up against the girl from behind, one arm around her waist spinning her out of harm's way, back up against the bar, eyes wide but too startled to make a noise. As he snatched the feathered dart from the air before it could strike her.

Revenge, after all, was a business of repaying like for like. He didn't hesitate to flip the dart with its sharpened metal tip in his fingers, and shot it right back at its original thrower.

Who screeched and clutched at the side of his head. And the whole room was shocked into silence, except for the man's miserable moaning. He bent, checked his hand, and straightened at the sight of the blood from his ear – Merlin's aim was _very_ good. "He attacked me!" the man shrieked out. "Reeve! Reeve! He attacked me!"

"Stranger, I warned you," the reeve growled, rising from his chair.

"He asked for that," Merlin stated dispassionately to the room at large. "You all saw what he tried to do to her."

That didn't help, only seemed to heighten the tension in the room. All his senses were alert, his fingers tingling at his sides. Ready for anything. The reeve rounded the table, and he didn't back down, giving the man a glare as he reached out – maybe without knowing what his own intentions were.

"Don't touch me." Deliberately he turned his back. Calculated risk, but a reeve wouldn't stab even a stranger in the back, in front of twenty of his townspeople. _Just… don't touch me._

"You're under arrest." Maybe not stab, but – the reeve's hand clamped onto his shoulder heavily, pinching cruelly to turn him around by force.

So he did.

He rounded on the reeve, swinging. Right hook. Crossover. Knocked the reeve back, clutching at his jaw in surprise – and there was blood on his face, too.

"Grab him!"

"He's crazy!"

"Attacked the reeve!"

At least three more hands latched onto his clothing – the girl trying to sidle her way out of danger without being struck by a flying blow – and he was suddenly fighting in earnest, like a wild thing, for his freedom. Just get to the door. Just get to the door.

The room was hot and closed in about him, no air to breathe like choking on smoke like being buried alive. Hands grasping, fists hitting, boots kicking - he kicked someone back and thought his way to the door was almost clear.

Someone grabbed a massive handful of his shirt and vest near the shoulder, and his feet left the floor. His backbone scraped on the edge of the bar as he was hauled up and over; his bootheel caught someone else – red shirt and brown vest – as he twisted in the big bartender's grip, snarling, trying to reach him to fight back. And he dropped Merlin unceremoniously to the floor.

"Not in my place!" he thundered, reaching under the edge of the bar – all hollow shelves for storing bottles and small casks and extra glasses – for a vicious-looking club.

He kicked at the big man to delay the use of _that_ weapon – broken bones took longer to heal than bruises – and scrambled to right himself. Second plan, through the double-hinged door and hope for some back exit to an alley maybe, cool and dark and quiet –

A woman shrieked, "Watch out for the –"  
>He hit his head as he lunged upright, on something so solid his knees turned to water and dumped him back down to the floor and for an instant he thought he'd run into the bar itself – or the wall? – and then a scalding wash of liquid cascaded over his shoulder, back and chest. He cried out and writhed, trying to get the burning substance off him, away from him – on his hands, now the smell of beef stew thick in his nostrils.<p>

An enormous figure loomed, reached past a defense delayed and distracted, to steal consciousness with one large fist.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Darkness. And silence.

Except for someone whistling somewhere. The sound penetrated his head, skittered sharply across his skin. The smell of beef stew was too close, was inside his nostrils. He gagged, and his whole body began to ache once again.

Again. It hadn't been a week since the last bruise from his last fight in the last town had faded.

Merlin lay still, only moving to breathe deeply. When his head cleared. When the pain dulled. When the sun rose on a new day. Then.

He heard a sound he recognized – keys on a ring. Keys in the metal lock of a jail cell – a lock he could easily pick, and would, but not until later.

"Wake up, you good for nothing –" A kick on his left thigh.

He was limp, unresisting. Rolled with the kick a little. It took his breath away, ripped through a stitch in his side. He readied himself to grab the foot, the leg, should it happen again. Readied himself to fight. Again.

Then a low voice said, "Please don't, Reeve." A voice that was almost musical.

He opened his eyes stiffly against the glare of the lantern that swung over him.

"He's awake," a low male voice observed expressionlessly.

He couldn't see. His left eye was swollen shut and the light pierced his right eye, tacking his brain to the back of his skull. It hurt.

"Percy, lift that lantern away," said a third voice. He remembered, _Soup's up_! She continued, "How'd you like a light shoved in your eyeballs after a scrap?"

Strong and gentle hands laid hold of his shoulders, fingers curled under his arms to raise him to a sitting position. He shrugged the hands off automatically, raising one arm to shield his eyes as he used his other elbow and his heels to push back from the voices.

"Please," said the girl's voice somewhere behind the light of the lantern. "Don't be afraid." Someone touched his knee.

"Ha!" He coughed, and spat blood on the floorboards of the cell. "Afraid." His tone was arrogant, and he made no attempt to hide or change it. He glared at them, keeping his head down to further shield his eyes. "What should I have to fear?"

The older woman laughed. "Yep, this one will live," she said, to no one in particular. "Percy, set that lantern down and give me the bucket."

The lantern moved back, to the other side of the cell. He watched them suspiciously, blinking twice in an attempt to calm his whirling vision. The girl knelt beside him. He knew it was the dark-haired girl from the tavern, though the hood of the cloak she was wrapped in shielded her face as she watched Percy set the lantern on the bench beside himself.

The red-haired woman – Shasta, wasn't it? – took a tin bucket from Percy, lifting a cloth off the top as she set it on the floor near Merlin's left knee. She reached for the button at his collar; he shoved her hand away with a force that was almost a slap.

"Stranger," Percy said, his voice coming deeply from his cavernous chest. He didn't move, but his eyes glittered in the light. "You touch my wife again, I'll beat another quarter hell out of you."

He glared fiercely back at the big bartender. "Then tell your wife not to touch me," he said.

"Quit it," Shasta said, as much to her husband as to him. She reached again, shuffling forward on her knees. Again he grabbed her hand and shoved it away; Percy rose from the bench, swiftly for a big man. But Shasta smacked Merlin's hand. "Quit it," she repeated. "No one's going to hurt you."

She wasn't going to give up, and he felt suddenly childish resisting. And so he let her unbutton his shirt, push the collar back to inspect the skin of his neck and shoulder.

"Fair scalded," she said cheerfully. "Kid, you're lucky that kettle wasn't any hotter."

"He's lucky it missed his head, coming down," the girl murmured. Her face was still turned away from him. Shasta humphed a short chuckle. In the corner, Percy crossed his arms over his broad chest.

"Come on," Shasta ordered. "Strip off the rest of your clothes and rub some of this on your burns." She set a small clay jar on the floor. "I'll wash your clothes tonight, have them ready when Reeve lets you go tomorrow."

"No," he said. "Go away."

"Well, aren't you the friendly one," Shasta said tartly. "Just trying to be neighborly, seeing as you did Freya a favor." The girl glanced at him swiftly, then dropped her eyes. "More than most would have done," Shasta continued, lifting her voice.

"Now, Shasta," said Red-shirt – the reeve – coming into the back room to lean against the bars of the cell. His demeanor was casual, almost friendly, but there was a stiff defensiveness to his tone. "Let's not start all that again."

"You saw it yourself, you said so," Shasta retorted. "We'd be waking Gaius right now to bandage Freya up if it weren't for – hey, stranger, what's your name?"

"Leave me alone," he said in a weary monotone. "You're wasting your time."

Percy grunted, "Yeah, looks like."

Shasta sat back on her heels. "Well, there's some water to wash up with, and your stew you never ate. We'll see you in the morning."

No, they wouldn't. He bared his teeth in a grin. Come morning, he'd be gone.

"Come, Freya," Shasta said, as Percy helped her to her feet.

"You go on ahead," the girl said. "I'm going to stay a minute."

"You sure that's safe?" Shasta questioned, giving the girl a hard look and jerking her head toward Merlin.

"No trouble, now," Reeve Whatley cautioned.

The girl looked steadily back at the plump older woman. "What could he do?" she said simply, softly.

Shasta's expression changed, and she nodded wearily – sadly, almost. She bent and reached across Merlin's legs to touch the girl's face. "Bless you, darlin'," she said. "But what about –"

"He's sleeping off his drink," the girl said swiftly. "He won't be around until morning."

Shasta nodded then. "Be careful coming home, anyway," she said, and rose to follow Percy through the door of the cell.

"No trouble," the reeve repeated, looking at both remaining occupants, then stepped to the front room himself.

Merlin pushed himself back far enough to rest his head on the bench. Watching her. She was too trusting, too naïve. How was she to know he wouldn't attack and force himself on her, hand over her mouth so none would know? He'd be punished for it, sure, but it would be done all the same – he'd known some to do it that way. He'd also helped punish some who did it that way.

"I wanted to say thank you," she said in her low musical voice, not meeting his eyes. "It isn't often someone intervenes. Percy does what he can…"

He didn't understand what she meant. _Whatever your fancy, girl_, he thought, _talk your little heart out_. He closed his eyes.

"It wasn't necessary," she continued. "Burton will be furious when he wakes up, and make trouble for you, trouble Reeve Whatley won't get in the middle of. But it was nice of you."

He lifted his head to grin at her, a cold-eyed grin. "That's something no one's said of me in a long time."

"Why not?" she said, looking into his eyes for the first time. He shook his head. The answer to that question was too long. "What is your name?" she asked. "Where are you from?" After waiting for his answer as the silence stretched, she added, "You really aren't much for talking, are you?"

He said nothing. Even a _no_ would be superfluous.

Her clothing rustled quietly as she stood. "I'll go," she said. "You can wash up and eat with a little privacy." She went to the door of the cell and paused, then looked back at him. "It's funny that you'd fight for someone who's a stranger to you."

He tipped his head back on the bench, ignoring her. The door clanged shut behind her and the soft footfalls left the room.

"Don't go getting ideas, stranger," the reeve said, returning after a moment to lock Merlin's cell. "No use getting sweet on that gal, she's married."

"Why should I care?" he said without moving or opening his eyes.

"Because it'd cause trouble, and you caused enough already," Reeve Whatley said. "That's her husband's partner you clipped with the dart."

He shook his head. What a crazy town. Happy he'd be to kick up its dust on his way out.

"And Padlow isn't any better," the reeve continued, almost proudly, in a talkative mood. "He's awful possessive of that little wife of his. He's out now, though, you'll not see him for months and more."

His heart had stilled at the reeve's first words, and his head lifted of its own accord. "Padlow?" he said, keeping his tone even and steady. "A peddler?"

"Among other things. He'll be up to Stantaneo about now, but travels the whole shire while the weather's good. He'll be back for the winter."

"And that –" he couldn't bring himself to call her anything – "that was Padlow's wife?"

"Yep. But don't go getting ideas, like I already said. You leave well enough alone." He left, whistling again.

Merlin pushed himself to his feet, noticing in a detached way how weakly he swayed. He'd need his strength soon. _So it's come down to it_, he thought. After all and at last. The name would become a face, after so many months. The face he'd searched for from the mountains to the coast and back again, the face of the man who'd walked in the front door of the farmhouse as he'd slipped out the back. The last face any of his family had ever seen, and the one he'd not laid eyes on yet. But he would. Oh, yes. He would.

And then he'd know why.

…..*…..

**A/N: I normally don't hold with begging for reviews. Only, I always have this nervous feeling about a first chapter, whether anyone is going to like it or not, or disagree with what I'm doing, whether I should continue - and because this one will be so **_**very**_** different… please review, good or bad?**


	2. Nightmares

**Chapter 2: Nightmares**

The long hours and long miles combined with the first hot meal he'd had in ten days, and sleep overcame him.

And he dreamed. As he always did whenever his eyelids betrayed him into closing.

Of course it was a nightmare. And the worst of it was, he always dreamed himself to be exactly where he knew he'd been upon falling asleep, so he always believed the dream reality, up to the point of waking.

He lay on the lower bunk in the cell, and opened his eyes. Through the bars of the cell a reddish light was shining, illuminating a long wide table and four pairs of bare feet, from one large pair on the left to a tiny pair on the right. He struggled upright with horrifying slowness.

As one, the four corpses sat up also, like puppets jerked abruptly on a string, their skin holding a ghastly gray sheen even in the light. Their faces were turned on him, though the eyes were sewn shut with jagged black stitches, and the sheet spread across them was soaked in blackening blood. One corner of the sheet dropped to reveal his father's right arm and four of the stab wounds, from which blood gouted inexorably.

The arm, and one outstretched finger, lifted to point at him.

"Not me!" he shouted at them in hoarse desperation. "It wasn't me!"

Then he knew that another shared his cell, an as-yet faceless other, sitting beside him on the bunk. The guilty murderer. The pitiless torturer. If he could only force his head to turn, to see, to identify, he could point this one out to his family. Then the dream ghosts would visit him instead of Merlin, torturing the guilty one with guilt.

The other corner of the sheet slipped aside, as his baby sister slid down from the table. Her hands were bound with rough twine in front of her chest, and her body was dressed only in her underclothes. Her head rested impossibly sideways on one shoulder.

She stepped toward him, passing through the bars of the cell like mist, slowing as she came, reaching out with one hand, the other dragged helplessly along, reaching with trusting baby fingers. The muscles of her face strained, pulling at the stitching in her eyelids and lips.

Pulling, stretching, tearing. She was almost touching him now. Her eyes opened, her mouth opened, and blood gushed out, filthy dark. She was looking at him, sideways from her shoulder. Her mouth formed his name, "Merlin…"

A hand touched him.

He lay still with an effort, kept his muscles from moving, from defending, from striking out at his baby sister. But the horror overwhelmed him and he screamed, loud and long, his throat tearing.

The hands grew unnaturally large, smothering him, choking him. And then he fought back, fought against the bright light in his eyes, red at the center, fought against all hands, fought with his whole body even against the wall beside him and the cot beneath him.

"Think he's got something contagious?" he heard a man say.

"Do something!" A woman's voice. "Help me!"

A softness passed over him, binding and restricting. A shroud.

He struggled to the last ounce of strength, and beyond. Not the grave for him. Not yet, when he was finally so close.

Merlin sensed movement, and lifting. He felt ill for only a second, then vomited his dinner in the direction his mind claimed was down.

_Maybe I'm sick_, he thought dazedly. _Maybe I really am very ill_.

The soft weight dragged at his limbs, hands clawing at him along arms and legs, til he was dumped on a hard, jolting surface. A coffin? Not knowing, not understanding, still he tried to escape, to move away. His struggles felt weak and ineffectual to him, which made him angry. He opened his eyes wide and saw only darkness, but the anger gave him a little more strength, and he freed one arm, grasping and clawing at all within reach.

"Still going at it," a woman said.

Was he hearing ghosts? Were there others here in the grave with him?

A vise closed around his wrist, forcing it back to his side despite his best efforts. He twisted his head from side to side, trying to wriggle out of the earth, up to the air and sun and sky. He couldn't even breathe to yell. His throat choked and burned.

There were lights against the backs of his eyelids, then, and voices he couldn't understand. Loud voices, soft voices, angry and worried.

Something liquid and foul-smelling splashed across his mouth. Pouring, pouring. He was drowning, tied in the bottom of his grave. He swallowed convulsively and his raw throat seared with fire.

And then all was silence, and stillness.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

He woke to a weightless feeling, as though he was drifting in a cloud of fog through which light was faintly diffused. A vague blur.

Where was he? Why was his mind so hazy?

But he discerned no immediate threat, and the pain he felt was minimal – the consequence, he remembered, of the fight at Percy's Place. His back stung in a series of patches marching up his backbone, the scalded skin of his chest, back, and shoulder stung, too. But not unpleasantly.

He became aware of voices. Women's voices. No threat there, either, at least not usually. A woman's weapon was her tongue, and it only hurt if you cared. His mother had never wielded hers against Merlin.

"You can count his ribs from across the room." He could understand the words, now.

"Still, he's not bad-looking."

"He cleans up real nice."

Laughter. Oh, that was a nice sound. Pure and innocent joy. He felt safe.

"Wonder where he's from?"

"Not from around here, that's for sure."

He heard water noises, swishing and gurgling, trickling and pouring. The fog he was in was wet, and warm. But he could feel he was sitting on something solid, and his head was resting on something at once hard and padded.

"Did he get all those the other night?"

"Couldn't've."

Merlin distinguished two voices. Two women. And he realized they were talking about him. He should be able to open his eyes. To lift his head, his hands, which seemed to be floating out in front of him.

"Devil of a fighter, isn't he?" one woman casually observed. "What happened at the jail?"

"Gaius thought a fit of some kind."

"Maybe his heart?"

"Well, he wasn't breathing for a bit, there. Thought we'd lost him."

"Guess he's pretty sick."

"Gaius says it's not being sick, it's not having food or rest. Says the rest of it's likely in his head."

He strained all his muscles at once. His eyebrows felt like they were reaching for heaven, trying to open his eyes. The rest of his muscles wouldn't respond, though his skin sensed rhythmic moving, scraping. Maybe he was being skinned alive.

At the thought, his eyes popped open. For a moment he could only see a white blur, then he felt something soft and astringent-smelling spread across his face. His eyes focused on a thin line of silver light, moving toward him, a sharp line, a reflection, held in a human hand. He recognized the razor blade.

"Shasta, he's awake!" one of them squealed. "Gaius said that stuff would last til tomorrow!"

"He's fighting it," the other answered.

"Should we give him more?"

"Don't know. We'll see." The razor moved toward him again, the reflection of light playing on the sharp edge. And he was helpless. He couldn't move.

Oh, yes, he could. He pushed one hand up, through the thickness of the air, wrapped his fingers around the wrist of the hand holding the razor, held on as hard as he could.

He tried to sit up, instead of sliding down – into a tub of soapy water, he realized. His eyes were clearing – he sprawled in a tin tub, his head resting on a towel draped over the rim. He shoved his feet against the other side hard enough to splash water over the side, bracing himself to struggle upright. His free hand found the rim, and gripped.

The unfamiliar voice said uncertainly, "Shall I get Percy?"

He blinked. His body was leaning forward, almost enough to dunk his face in the water in front of him. He frowned at his reflection – there were suds all over his chin, down his throat. A shave, then. He looked at the hand that held the razor, followed it up the plump red arm – sleeve rolled above the elbow – to Shasta's round face.

Her green eyes pinned him. There was a calmness in her face, and no fear. "I don't believe so, Gwen," she said. "You'll behave, won't you, Merlin?"

He didn't let go of her hand. His brain felt wrapped in wool, thick and muffled. His tongue, too. How did they know his name?

"Because if you don't," Shasta continued, "Percy will pour the rest of Gaius' sleeping draught down your throat, and off you'll go for a few more days, pleasant as a sleeping babe."

He understood. He'd been drugged. But how? Had there been something in the bowl of stew? And why?

"Just a shave," Shasta coaxed. "Relax, now. Just a shave of your whiskers."

He swallowed and rasped, "Cut me once and I'll kill you."

Merlin was serious, but she laughed like he'd made a fine joke. He sank back, exhausted. His hand was trembling from just that much exertion, so much that he caused her hand to shake, too. He let go, and closed his eyes again.

He didn't sleep, but rested as the razor scraped along his jaw and throat, over his chin. He didn't really care, did he, if she slipped and cut his throat? Did he?

"I knew there was a human being under here somewhere," Shasta joked.

"He looks right nice," the other voice commented. Gwen, Shasta had called her. If he wanted to remember names, here.

Then suddenly he had to step out of the room. He opened his eyes again and straightened, looking for his clothes, gripping the edge of the tub and shivering as the air hit his wet skin.

"I thought you were going to behave," Shasta reproached him. "What are you looking for?"

"My clothes." His lips were thick, his mouth dry. _The outhouse, and then a drink_, he thought. Water was free. He'd have to find some way of paying for the bath, though, because he couldn't skip this town. Not with Padlow coming right to him at the end of the year.

"Well!" Shasta said. "You're welcome for washing your stinking hide. We burned them."

That didn't sink in for a moment. Then he stared at her, aghast. He had a spare shirt, and socks, but no other changes of clothing, and here he sat in the cooling bath, naked. And two women in the room – he turned his head. The younger girl – the brown-skinned, curly-haired barmaid – squatted uneasily on the floor, her back against the wall and the skirt of a sunshine-yellow dress stretched across her knees, almost within arm's reach. And he had to leave the room quite urgently.

"A towel, then," he demanded.

"Why?"

He blushed, and glared at Shasta for causing it. "I'd like to leave the room for a moment," he said.

"Aha!" Shasta said. "Finally found our manners, did we?"

He leaned forward slowly, drawing his feet up under him, rocking onto his heels. It was going to take him a minute to stand up. He felt as weak as a kitten.

"Here, now, you're going to tip yourself over, and the bath with you," Shasta said. "Just wait – Gwen, get Percy, please?" Gwen pulled herself up, and he caught her peeking over the edge of the tub before she gave him an incorrigible grin and turned to leave the room. "Careful, now," Shasta said, tucking an arm around his back and helping to support him upright, though he was taller than she was; as a married woman she was confident and unembarrassed. "Here's a towel." She bent to pick it up.

The door opened behind them. "Shasta, Percy says he can't – oh!" said a musically feminine voice.

He turned as Shasta handed him the towel. The girl with black hair – Frieda or Freya, he thought he remembered her name – stood sideways to them, shielding her eyes with her hand. Her ear was bright red.

"I'm so sorry," she said breathlessly. "I didn't realize… Shasta, Percy says he's busy, can it wait or can I help you instead…"

Shasta chuckled. "No, Freya, likely not. We can't have him knocking you over, now can we?"

Freya nodded without replying, and closed the door behind her. He wrapped the towel around his waist, and tucked the edge under at his hip, then held onto the tub to step out.

"Go slow," Shasta cautioned. "If you're feeling queasy or light in the head, just sit down a minute."

"I can make it," he said roughly, pushing her hands away. "Where –"

"Through this door, off to your left a ways," Shasta said. "We share with a couple of other folks. If you're not back in the count of a hundred, I'll send Percy."

He made the trip in the count of a hundred, and saw no one else, but staggered back to the flagstones squaring the back door of the tavern, all the world a filmy gray, and a roaring noise in his ears. Goosebumps were raised on his bare skin, the air still chilly in the spring, in the shade.

Percy was called to carry him up to the room he'd been sleeping in, but he refused the help, managing a ghost of his old surliness.

"You're nothing but skin and bones," Percy told him. "I could carry you with one hand behind my back."

Pride wouldn't let him give in, so instead Percy half-carried, half-supported him up the stairs. He collapsed on the cot, too tired even to straighten his limbs or cover himself with the blanket, or arrange the pillow under his head, which the big bartender did for him, with efficiency and a rough sort of self-conscious gentleness.

He hated this helpless, fuzzy-headed feeling. "Whatever it was the physician gave you for me, don't give me any more," he said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.

"Behave yourself, and we won't," Percy returned.

Whatever it was they had poured down his throat wasn't finished with him, however, because when he again opened his eyes, he felt more rested than he'd been in a long time, and remembered no dreams. He yawned. The light was low in the narrow room, but accustomed as he'd become to judging times and seasons, he knew it for dawn, and not twilight.

He swung his legs over the side of the cot and rested a moment longer before grabbing the pile of cast-off clothes someone had left for him at the foot of the bed. At least his boots, worn and scuffed as they were, had been spared.

Merlin made it halfway down the stairs, each hand steadying himself against the walls, bones and bruised muscles protesting stiffly at every step, before a wave of vertigo convinced him to sit down or risk falling the rest of the way. He closed his eyes and listened, heard the rhythmic chop of someone splitting firewood somewhere behind the tavern, voices shouting in the street, a woman humming downstairs.

And footsteps.

He opened his eyes as the black-haired girl came around the corner, her arms full of sheets, and set one foot on the bottom stair before looking up and seeing him.

"Oh!" she said, startled. Then blushed a rosy red and dropped her eyes. "I really am sorry about walking in on you the other day. Gwen never said –"

He'd endured lots of reactions during his few years on the road, but embarrassment? For his sake? He interrupted gruffly, "Don't worry about it." He remembered then that this was the wife of the man who'd killed his family, and his own long-standing plan included killing her. He frowned. Scowled.

She hefted the sheets, climbed a few stairs, and sat down where her face was level with his knees. "How do you feel?" she asked. "Gaius was going to come later to check on you."

He shrugged. As soon as he felt he could make it, he was going to finish his descent, find out more about the town, and figure out a plan. He had to find work if he was going to stay here at the tavern, until the peddler returned, had to pay for his room and board, for new clothes and whatever supplies he needed. And if he did kill this girl, he didn't want to spend any more time looking at her or talking to her than he had to.

"He said he thought you had an attack of your heart, or lungs," she continued in her low, musical voice. "Or maybe a seizure. Has this ever happened to you before?"

Dreams? Oh, yeah. But usually there was no one around to care. This was a strange town.

She was watching him closely, waiting for an answer. Instead, he reached out to put a hand flat on the wall, tried to stand. She dropped her load of sheets, came right up under him, her shoulder under his arm, to support him, and he couldn't muster the strength to protest. Serve her right if he fell on her. Down the stairs they went, around the corner.

All the chairs were turned upside-down on the table-tops, the sawdust swept from the floors. Which had been scrubbed and sanded too, if he wasn't mistaken. Quite clean for this sort of establishment, in his experience.

He found himself wondering if she worked here. Maybe that was how Padlow had met her – but she had a look too innocent for a prostitute, she had blushed twice over her glimpse of him in his bath. Maybe she was a little slow in the head. Have to be, to marry a murderer.

Merlin pushed himself away from her then, steadied himself against a table. She didn't seem to notice his impatience with her, but pulled down a chair from the table, turned it clumsily, and pushed it toward him. He took down his own chair, but the righting of it almost over-balanced him.

"Be careful," she said, with a smile that lighted her eyes. "Gwen says there isn't any room on you for more bruises."

He sprawled in the chair, half-against the table. She stood by the second chair, uncertainty coming into her face as she watched him.

"You probably shouldn't be up yet," she said. "Maybe I should get Percy –"

"No," he said. "Go away and let me sit for a minute."

She backed away a step, but didn't appear to have taken offense at his brusqueness. "Whatever you say," she said. "I'll finish making the beds, and then see if I can find you something to eat." She turned and hurried away; he noticed that the hem of her skirt was frayed, and her shoes too large for her feet.

He felt tired again. He was still pushing himself too hard. That wouldn't do. No use trying to face Padlow the killer if he was too weak to best him and make him pay. He hadn't realized he was so close to the edge.

But now for a plan. He closed his eyes to think for a while. Firstly he needed the effects of whatever drug was given to him to wear off, and then to regain his strength. Then he needed a job to pay for the shelter and food of the tavern, and time to prepare. There were six months til the first snows of winter.

Padlow, when he arrived, wouldn't suspect a thing – he'd never seen Merlin's face, either. So he'd have the element of surprise. He'd have to find out where Padlow lived, study the layout of his home, and learn the town and land like the back of his hand.

And steer clear of the girl. If he was going to kill her, he didn't want to regret it. He didn't want to like her. And he already had an idea she was a likeable girl, in spite of her bad choice in a husband.

Sitting there at the table, his eyes closed and his head drooped down to rest on his outstretched arm. How should he kill her? He didn't want her to suffer, there was no reason for that – he only wanted Padlow to feel the agony of losing someone he loved, losing everything he had in the world. Maybe he should kill her soon, so the peddler would also feel the helplessness that he wasn't there to protect her. But then, he probably wouldn't be able to stay in town after killing one of its citizens. If they didn't hang him, they'd –

At the creak of the hinges of the swinging kitchen door, he lifted his head. And froze.

His father stood across the room from him, gray-skinned, hollow-eyed, blood dripping from more than twenty holes in his body, from the base of his throat to the lowest point of his belly. He stumbled forward, leaving bloody footprints on the newly-sanded floor.

"Merlin," he gasped. More blood poured from his mouth, down his throat. "What are you doing here?"

He couldn't breathe. As his father's body struggled across the tavern, and blood pooled across the floor in his wake, Merlin pushed himself back in his chair, leaning away from the gray hand that reached to touch him, to wrap its fingers around his throat and squeeze.

"Merlin!" The hand grasped his shoulder and shook, but more gently than he expected.

His throat was still too raw to scream, but it tried. He tipped over backwards, landed heavily on the floor, on his back. He heard the crack of his head on the floorboards.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

"What happened?" Freya said, hurrying around one of the tables. Percy knelt over the body of the stranger, sprawled across an overturned chair.

"Don't know," Percy said, looking up at her. "I came through the door – he looked at me and tipped right over."

"You think he might suffer from fits?" Freya said, kneeling beside the stranger. His hair and skin were damp, his breathing rapid and almost panicky, though his body remained limp and unmoving. "Like the other night at the jail?"

"Don't know," Percy said again, sounding more uncertain. "When Reeve Whatley tried to wake him, he fought tooth and nail and never seemed to realize it."

"But Percy," Freya said, "he doesn't seem violent –" Her friend raised one eyebrow at her, and she added, "Not like –" Percy nodded quickly, knowing what she meant. She reached to straighten a black curl on the stranger's forehead. He was alone, just as she had been, without the benefit of friends. Maybe she could be his friend…

Percy shot her a disapproving glance. "Freya," he said.

"What?"

"You've got enough trouble already," he said, his deep voice quiet. "You don't want to take up with this one."

She sat back on her heels, steadying herself with a hand on the seat of a nearby chair, and feeling her face flush warm. "Percy," she said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. "You know I'm married."

The stranger shifted, opened his eyes, blinked at the rafters. Shut them again for a moment. And even as she observed the incredible shade of blue of his eyes, she noticed that a tear had squeezed out between his long dark lashes.

"Hey, stranger," Percy said, taking hold of his shoulder to shake him. The stranger sat up and pushed Percy's hand away in a single swift motion.

"Are you all right?" Freya said hesitantly, moving back from him.

He didn't answer, and after a moment pushed himself to his feet as Percy and Freya rose. Percy shrugged and turned back to the bar. Freya reached for the overturned chair, but he was there first, righting it a little awkwardly – he must still be weak.

"Thank you," she said.

He captured her gaze with a single hard look – she saw so much anger there, and hatred – for her, she was stunned to realize. No, not quite hatred – the desire to hate. That was even more confusing, he didn't know her, why should he want to hate her? A thought chilled her – could he see what the others already knew? What had the reeve told him during his time in the jail?

He turned and headed for the door, but hadn't taken more than two steps when Reeve Whatley pushed his way in and took in the room, his beady black eyes darting between the three occupants. The stranger's steps didn't slow, til the reeve closed the door behind him and leaned against it, tapping his walking stick against his boot, a wolfish grin spread across his face.

"Well, what have we got here," he drawled.

The stranger stopped, half-turned as if he were contemplating seeking another exit. Freya saw the twitch of his muscles when he made his decision to stand his ground. His fists clenched by his sides – Freya wondered if he knew he was doing it.

"So the patient has recovered," the reeve said, sarcasm thick in his tone as he gave his attention to the stranger.

Percy rounded the edge of the bar and busied himself behind the counter. Sheet changes being finished, Freya drifted slowly, quietly, toward the kitchen.

"The way I see it, stranger, you've got two choices," the reeve continued. "Jail or the road."

Freya stopped, surprised. Percy said, "Why?" at the same time as the stranger said, "No." The reeve pushed away from the door, his eyes again flicking between the three of them. Freya took a few more steps so his attention would shift away from her.

"If you make trouble for me, I make trouble for you," he warned. "I said to you, we don't want no trouble, then you go and start a fight – twice."

The stranger seemed to grow taller. "If you don't want any trouble, then leave me alone," he said. His tone was still quiet, but Freya shivered involuntarily at the iciness of it.

The reeve advanced, lifting his chin and pointing to a large but fading bruise on the left side of his face. "You attacked me, and others," he accused. "You caused damage here and at the jail. If you're not leaving, what are your plans, stranger?"

Percy and Freya were waiting for the answer, too, but the stranger said nothing. Freya put her hand on the door to the kitchen, while Percy rubbed a glass beer mug round and round, watching. The reeve took a few more steps, a look of curiosity growing.

"No one in this town knows you," he said. "You got money to stay here? What are your plans? I don't want you starting any trouble," he repeated.

"I have business here," the stranger said. "I plan to stay until I finish it."

"Business with who? How long will it take you?"

The stranger shifted his weight; he was growing impatient. "It is my own concern." His voice contained a warning. "I give you my word I won't cause… unnecessary trouble."

Freya wondered, abruptly, what he might consider _necessary_ trouble.

"I don't know you, stranger," the reeve protested. "I can't take your word for nothing. How am I supposed to protect my citizens from someone like you?"

The stranger was sideways to Freya as he stepped right up to the reeve, and she could see the corner of a grim smile on his face. She also saw that the reeve disliked the emphasis on the finger's-breadth difference in their heights.

"Leave me alone," the stranger repeated, almost too softly for Freya to hear. "Punish me when I break your laws, but leave me alone til then and we'll have no trouble." And as suddenly as a blowing breeze, the stranger passed the reeve and was out the door. Percy set down the mug he'd been continually polishing and grinned at the reeve's consternation.

"You stay out of it," the reeve warned him sharply. He yanked the door open, lifted the walking stick, and looked around before stepping out, as though he feared an ambush.

"Reeve's in a bad temper," Percy observed to Freya, and she smiled at the big bartender's satisfaction.

"I think Merlin can handle him," she said.

"Reeve Whatley, sure," Percy said slowly. "But Burton and Padlow? if he stays that long…" Freya's cheerful mood immediately dissipated. Percy noticed and said, "I'm sorry, Freya. I didn't mean to –"

There was nothing for her to say. She continued to the kitchen as Percy reached for another mug. Then a thought stopped her in her tracks.

The stranger had said, _punish me when I break your laws_. Not if, but when.

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, if I didn't get back to you in a message – know that I do appreciate it!**

**Also, Arthur will be showing up in a few chapters. Though the pov will stay Merlin/Freya. And next chapter, Gaius and others!**

**Readers, please… If you decide that something about this fic is so off-putting you want to stop reading, please let me know in a review or PM, if it's something I can fix I will… thanks!**


	3. Friends and Enemies

**Chapter 3: Friends and Enemies**

Merlin crossed the street quickly and ducked under the overhang of the livery, next to the smith's forge. So help him, if the reeve followed him… but Reeve Whatley peered out the tavern door, up the street and down, and headed in the opposite direction.

"Can I help you, stranger?" The drawl came from behind him, but he wasn't surprised. He'd heard the grunt and puff of the attendant forking hay in the back of the stable.

"I need to board my nag there for a few days at least," he answered, turning to face the attendant, a skinny young man with a bored expression. "Maybe for longer, I don't know yet. Can I pay you when I leave?"

The attendant leaned on the fork, studying him. "It isn't our habit to board without pay first," he informed him.

"Care to buy her?" Merlin suggested. "I've got no coin yet, I'm new in town."

The attendant smirked. "I heard." Of course, the excitement of the fight the night he'd come to town must have spread by now, the best rumor a small town had heard in a while. "Well, I can do this – I'll suggest to Elyan that we board the nag til you owe as much as she's worth, then she's ours. If you can pay anything before then, we'll work out the boarding fees."

"Good enough," Merlin said, taking a few quick steps to shake the man's hand. Then he returned to his fork and hay, and Merlin strolled down the main street, studying the town.

After listening to the rhythmic clang-clang-clunk of the dark-skinned smith's hammer on anvil, he noticed the duller tone of a hammer on wood, and an accompanying cheerful whistle. He crossed the street, following the sound down the alley by the burned building – the fresh-planked roof had been painted with pitch, the next step of reconstruction complete - and came out behind the row of frontage shops.

Hammering and whistling both came from a short, round man whose thick white hair grew almost to his shoulders. He wore the drab dusty overalls of a day-laborer, and stood on the third-to-the-top rung of a rickety ladder leaning against the back wall of the building. A sling supported his left arm; he didn't seem to notice Merlin's arrival.

He took a deep breath of the fresh air, feeling better than he had for – well, several days now, he supposed – and rested both hands loosely on his hips, watching. Any building or repair work needed in a farming community was usually a joint effort of any neighbor close enough to come for a day or two. But this workman was alone, and handicapped. That increased the curiosity he'd felt seeing the building itself, as he rode into town.

The workman slipped the hammer through his belt, reached into a front pocket for another nail, fitting it one-handed into a pre-drilled hole in a wide wooden shingle, then reached for the hammer to pound it into place. An awl lay on the ground by Merlin's feet, next to a stack of pine shingles and a twist of paper open to reveal a jumble of nails. Merlin wondered cynically how the man managed to bore holes in the shingles with only one hand. Apparently his handicap hadn't bothered the laborer; the whistle swung into another melody with scarce time for breath.

Merlin watched him pound two more nails, then the workman laid his hammer on the edge of the roof and carefully descended the ladder. When he turned, he stopped abruptly upon seeing the silent stranger. "Ah," the old man said. "Hello."

He didn't reply. He cared nothing for this man one way or the other, didn't care to speak nor to take his leave. He wondered how long before the workman's whistling was replaced by cursing at the awkwardness of his useless arm. The man studied him keenly in return, the color of his eyes lost in the wrinkles of friendliness.

"How are you feeling?" he said at length, and didn't do more than pause, when it became obvious Merlin wasn't going to respond. "Glad to see you up and around."

When Merlin still offered nothing, the old workman pursed his lips to continue his whistled tune, and bent to pick up another shingle – a one-by-one arrangement that would take him _months_ to finish. When he tucked it into the sling with a grimace before turning to climb the ladder, Merlin's feet followed of their own accord.

"Are they paying you by the hour?" he asked.

"Not exactly," the workman said. "By the job, is more like it." He paused one rung up to adjust his awkward elbow-grip on the shingle, a pause which brought him a bare hand's-width higher than Merlin.

A clatter sounded on the edge of the roof above them – the workman looked up and instinctively ducked as the hammer, dislodged by the ladder's movement, came hurtling down. Merlin reached out and caught it easily. A moment passed before the workman realized the deft movement that had saved him, then, unbalanced, stumbled back down to the ground. Merlin sighed, took the shingle from the crippled workman, and swung himself up the ladder, muscles only faintly protesting.

"Don't say it," he gritted between his teeth.

Just as the man, startled, said, "Thank you."

"Can you afford my help?" he growled, fitting the shingle into place and reaching down for a nail. He snapped his fingers, impatient until the man realized what he wanted, and handed one up to him.

"Are you well enough to help?" the other returned.

Merlin shrugged. "I'm staying at the tavern, and I owe them, as well as the physician and the stables," he added.

The old man's eyes twinkled. "I'm sure we can work something out," he said. "Enough to cover your keep, anyway."

"Done," Merlin said, and pounded the nail in. So the workman wasn't just another day-laborer, but someone in a position of some authority. "What is this place, anyway?"

"Doc's office," the other said shortly, with some private amusement.

"And what happened? The fire, I mean?"

Rounded shoulders shrugged; the old man's eyes and face entirely unreadable, even to one as observant as Merlin. "No one knows for sure."

At noon the early-spring sun was bright and warm, and the workman persuaded Merlin to share his lunch in the minimal shade behind the repaired pharmacy. The morning had passed without any conversation, for Merlin had ignored all of the old man's overtures to friendship, and he, without offense, had taken up his whistling again, though he'd watched Merlin closely the while.

Merlin ate quickly and without politeness. Inactivity inevitably resulted in thoughtfulness, which he avoided at all costs. His thoughts haunted him as nightmares all night, and only exhausting physical activity kept him sane during the day.

"No rush," the workman objected when Merlin swallowed the last of his share while pushing himself upright.

"I have debts to repay," Merlin answered. He headed for the ladder, but was met at the corner of the building by a plump middle-aged woman with gray eyes, and a gray-and-brown streaked braid pulled over one shoulder, coming down the alley. Her shawl was tucked in comfortably at her elbows and she carried a black leather bag, long and triangular-shaped, with a flat base and the hinged top clasped shut under a curved handle.

"What are you doing out of bed?" she demanded of him.

"Excuse me?" he said, and her eyes went past him to the workman.

"Gaius?" she said disapprovingly.

Gaius – the physician? He turned around, accusingly, to watch the old man labor to his feet.

"He has quite a constitution, Alice," Gaius said. "I expected the effects of the sleeping draught would keep him in bed today, especially after he was up yesterday, but here he is."

There was a fond mock-reproachful tone to the woman's voice. "So you've been working your patient? What if he got light-headed and tumbled from the roof?"

"He's been working himself," Gaius answered, without offense. "I've kept an eye on him. But now that you've brought my bag…"

Merlin made a move to bypass the woman Alice, who stopped him. "I don't need a physician anymore," he said to her. And over his shoulder to Gaius, "You could've said who you were."

His eyebrow rose. "You could have asked," the old man reminded him. "Now, until you pay your debt, you're under my care, like it or not. Strip off your shirt – or shall I call Shasta? She seems to think she can handle you."

"I may owe you for my care," Merlin said, side-stepping and turning to see them both at once. At the very least he could simply walk away down the alley… "But that puts me under no obligation to deepen my debt at your request."

"I'll make you a deal," Gaius proposed. "You pay your debt to me by cooperating, and by answering questions – indulge an old man. And I'll square it with Percy and Shasta, your room and board for your work on my roof."

Merlin's lip curled. "Then you had better take care what questions you ask," he responded, "if you expect to be paid." He took another step back and unbuttoned his shirt to discard it on the ground.

Gaius nodded, unperturbed. "Answer as you like," he said. "You interest me, and that's a fact." He walked around Merlin in a circle, poking at bruises and mumbling to himself, running surprisingly gentle fingers one-handed over the scalded skin, still pink and sensitive though it hadn't blistered. "You have quite a few scars," Gaius finally remarked. Alice unlatched the black bag and held it open, and the old man reached inside for an instrument shaped like a cow's horn. "Will you answer a question how you came by them?"

When Merlin didn't speak, Alice advised Gaius with unexpected humor, "Ask Percy. Or the reeve."

Gaius glanced at her, then up at Merlin for confirmation, and smiled at what he saw. "Can I ask why?" he said. Then he put the wide end of the black horn against Merlin's chest, and the other end into his ear.

Merlin shrugged. "I only ask to be left alone," he said.

"There are those who find that hard to do," Alice sighed, with a cryptic glance sideways at the physician's office.

"Breathe," Gaius told him. He listened a moment, shifted the horn, and repeated his order, and the procedure, several times, moving around to listen to Merlin's back. "Sound as a horse," he proclaimed, tucking the odd horn back into the bag in Alice's hands.

"What do you think?" Alice asked quietly.

"No physical cause for that fit the other night," Gaius said, holding Merlin's wrist palm up and counting as he felt his pulse. "Do you have these fits often?"

Merlin let him know it wasn't his business, throwing in a rude city expletive for emphasis, and deliberately not excusing himself for a lady's presence.

Alice's face was pink, but Gaius' only grunted, his eyebrow lifting again. "That means yes," he informed his lady friend – assistant? wife? "You see, if the answer had been no, he would have said, _what fits_?"

Merlin snagged his shirt from the ground and shoved his arms through the sleeves, heading once more for the ladder. Alice stayed a few minutes more to speak to Gaius, to poke at and fiddle with the old man's sling. Merlin kept up a flurry of hammering to better ignore them… but wondered if the old man had injured the arm at the same time as the fire.

They worked until the shadows lay too darkly across the shingles for accuracy, and Merlin slammed his thumb with the hammer instead of the nail. He spat out a bitter curse, shaking his hand.

"Are you all right?" Gaius asked from the ground, but Merlin ignored the question. Thumb throbbing, he climbed down and handed the hammer back to its owner.

"Tomorrow morning," he said only, and turned to leave.

"Merlin," the physician said – how did everyone know his name? He shivered like someone had just walked over his grave. "It's been nice to work with you – thank you again." He stretched out his right hand. Merlin considered not taking it, but the old man's smile was so kindly, he found himself reaching across before he meant to.

"I haven't told anyone my name," he said. "How did you come to know it?"

Gaius looked puzzled. "I believe it was Freya who told us – your name is Merlin, isn't it?"

"How did she know?"

Gaius shrugged, smiling again. "That's a question to ask her, my young friend."

"I'm not your friend," Merlin said, not unkindly. Just stating a fact.

"I'll be by the tavern later," Gaius promised, "to talk to Percy about our arrangement."

Merlin took the back alley to return to Percy's Place, avoiding the rubble heaps, his boots thudding on the ground the only sound in his immediate vicinity. Plenty noise, though, from the main street. Always was, in a town this size.

His head was up as he walked, scanning and studying the buildings, the windows, the roofs, always always – as Morgana made sure that Gwaine drilled into the apprentices – watchful and alert. The quarry that he in his profession hunted were by definition guilty of some sort of deceit and most times of violence, and were not without wiles and tricks, not above ambush if they discovered him tailing them. All would fight when brought to bay. So it was by now second nature to Merlin to process swiftly what his senses brought to him, to prepare for possible danger and to record information for future use.

There was no shadow, walking as he was into the west as the last slice of the sun slid into the distant treetops of the horizon. There might have been a whisper of sound, the high thin whir-whistle of a blade swung in menace. It might even have been his nose that warned him, bringing him the message of unwashed body and old blood like a butcher that has worked a long day in the heat.

Whatever it was, Merlin ducked as he stepped around the building next to the tavern, balance perfect as he came back up with the knife from his belt in his left hand, not really surprised to find that the neck his blade pressed against belonged to Burton the trapper, the peddler's partner, the point entering his greasy queue of hair.

An instant later the ax from Percy's woodpile thunked into the side of the building and Merlin's right hand grasped the haft firmly. Both Burton's hands gripped the ax with no chance of going for another weapon. Merlin noted distantly that his left ear had a large and nasty-looking scab.

"You want me to finish this right here?" he said softly. _Give me a reason. There's none to see. _ Some would surely suspect, but with no witnesses, and he could easily avoid the spray of blood from a slit throat at this angle… if he were willing to put his greater purpose in Emmett's Creek in jeopardy.

A sick pallor slid over the trapper's face, and the skin of his neck parted a little beneath the blade as he swallowed. He didn't answer. He didn't have to, as far as Merlin was concerned. This man would never fight fair, would never face him equally. But this man would also never quit trying to catch his back turned, his guard down.

"Don't start this again," Merlin warned, still without raising his voice. "I am not known for generosity. Or mercy."

He pulled the knife away and backed down the alley between the tavern and the next establishment, never taking his eyes from the other, keeping the knife ready to throw if that should become a good idea. Burton's hands dropped to his side and he watched Merlin, but made no other move.

Reaching the street, and the edge of the walkway in front of the tavern, Merlin twisted around to keep his back to the tavern wall as he faced the busyness of the main thoroughfare at twilight. A few lanterns were lit above the doors lining the street; as he turned he saw the reeve in his red shirt come out of the jail, fifty yards or so eastward down the street to light his own.

Whatley caught sight of him as well and paused. Merlin felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a wolfish grin, and flipped the knife once in the air before sliding it back into his belt, and entered the tavern.

Freya, the thin drab girl with beautiful sad eyes and a musical voice, the girl who knew his name and was the wife of his enemy, was at the tavern again that night, helping Gwen serve drinks and dinners. Merlin sat alone in the corner table by the staircase and watched the room, the farmers and ranchers and townsmen, their sons, their hired hands, sometimes their wives.

Mostly he watched _her_. Gathering what information he could about the one the murderer was closest to.

He found himself wondering what else the peddler was guilty of, what crimes he had committed here in his hometown, how much the townspeople knew of it. Freya was everywhere ignored, sometimes in a scornful, sometimes pitying way. No one spoke a word to her, and few even nodded thanks for her service. And she seemed content not to be noticed, almost like he himself.

Gaius came in like he'd promised, spoke to Percy across the bar, pointing him out. Percy nodded, his eyes on Merlin, and Gaius crossed the noisy, crowded room. As if to punctuate the comparison between the physician and the girl, almost everyone had a smile and a word for Gaius, a noted deference – which made him wonder, _then why not help with his roof_?

The old physician stopped in the middle of it all to speak to the girl, putting one hand gentle on her elbow, and she smiled for the first time since Merlin had come in.

"Percy and I have reached an agreement," Gaius said when he reached Merlin, but didn't join him in a seat at the table. "If you want to keep roofing my office, Percy and Shasta will see to it that you have one over your head, and all your meals."

Merlin nodded, not thanking the man, just approving the arrangement, acknowledging his understanding.

"I'll see you in the morning, then," Gaius said, and moved away, greeting one or two others in the crowd as he made his way to the door.

Merlin's eyes shifted back to the murderer's wife, watching her thin form weave between tables and people who didn't bother themselves to clear her way, watching her remain gracious despite the contempt of the people. There was something to her, something maybe even _special_, but he couldn't for the life of him figure why she had married a man who'd wring the necks of two sweet little girls like barnyard chickens.

He hated her. He had to hate her if he was going to kill her.

A scrawny middle-aged man with thin dark hair – head and chin – stopped next to the table where Merlin sat alone; he smelled faintly like a hog barn. "Ah, Mister –" he began uncertainly, squeezing a straw hat between his hands.

Merlin looked up, deliberately letting the other see the raging fury in his eyes. _You have terrible timing_. "Leave me alone," he said tonelessly.

The man stumbled backward a step, confusion covering his face. "Ah," he said again, glancing behind him to a table of three others dressed in similarly dingy clothes, ragged suspenders, straw hats. He looked to be the oldest of the four, and the other three were obviously awaiting the results of the interview. "If I could have just a minute of your time –" he started again, tentatively obsequious.

"No," Merlin said, not even raising his voice, looking past him to continue scanning the room.

"Well, you see –" the scrawny man said, but swallowed his sentence when Merlin rose abruptly from the chair, concentrating his glare. He was taller than the man, but maybe as much as two decades younger. Harder. And meaner.

"Go. Away," Merlin said softly. He didn't want to make another scene, this sleepy little town knew too much of him already. He couldn't imagine why this yokel would so persistently wish to speak to him.

The pig farmer stumbled back again, then turned and hurried back to his companions. It was obvious that Merlin remained the subject of their discussion from the quick glances sent his way, but he ignored them, choosing to return to the half-tumbler full of amber liquid in front of him. And listen.

The gossip was ordinary – wives, children, crops, livestock, business. Guesses predicting the season's weather. A muscular dark-skinned man told an amusing story of shoeing a fractious horse with a few short, pithy statements, and Merlin recognized him as the blacksmith – Allen, the stable attendant had said. Or Elyan, rather. He seemed to be a particular friend of the big bartender, and Merlin suspected a familial connection with Gwen, also.

A few young cowhands walked through the door and called flirtatiously to her, but no one took any offense; she answered in kind, and neither the bartender nor the blacksmith made anything of it. That was another curious thing about this tavern. Aside from Freya and Gwen, there didn't seem to be any other young women employed, for serving or for – serving. Unusual, but not unheard of, and it said something significant about the tavern-keepers. If there were such women in town, and there always were, their trade was at least not plied openly. It said something about the town, too.

Merlin's ears had always been sharp, and his few years of living off his wits had taught him how to use his senses without appearing to do so. To look like you're watching and listening was never safe.

Two topics, he soon discovered, were spoken of seldom, but never with neutrality. Taxes, and Padlow – though neither Burton nor the reeve were present, and he wondered if that had anything to do with it. The two, it seemed, were nearly inseparable. And anything to do with Padlow, anything at all, interested Merlin greatly.

Tonight, it seemed, was a cursing night, and no one liked Padlow. Merlin grinned fiercely into his mug. He fit right in. Maybe there would be no punishment for Padlow's murder.

Merlin stayed in the corner until Percy led the last stumbling patron to the door. He'd kept his drinks to a minimum, as he could little afford excess, either physically or monetarily. Freya appeared from the kitchen, stifling a yawn behind the back of her hand, and began to straighten chairs and wipe tables with a rag. She glanced up as he rose to make his way upstairs, and smiled tentatively at him.

He hated her – how could she be married to a baby-killer? He turned his back and took the stairs two at a time.

Merlin woke in the early gray dawn to two sensations. The first was a stiff aching soreness up his shoulders and down the backs of his legs, reward of the first steady manual labor he'd put his hand to since trying clumsily to farm his father's land.

The second was surprise – there had been no dreams.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he swung off his cot and dressed for the day's work.

The kitchen was a small room, clean and neatly organized, fireplace and closed bedroom door on the left, small family table and an open alcove on the right. A pot of coffee bubbled on the hearth and two loaves of yesterday's bread nestled under a red-and-white checked cloth on the table.

Merlin helped himself with a knife and a mug he found in a drying rack, and seated himself at the table, his back to the wall, as Freya pushed open the back door and entered, carrying a full pail of milk. Aside from a shyly murmured, "Good morning," she didn't try to make conversation, but busied herself getting the kitchen ready for the day.

He ate deliberately, knowing he would have to rebuild his energy and stamina to face Padlow. He must be hard as a rock in body and spirit. There must be no room for failure. And meanwhile Padlow's wife was within his reach, he had only to choose the time.

In this unyielding frame of mind he'd put himself through his paces – good food but not too much of it, hard work and more than enough of that – deep sleep without dreams, if he worked himself hard and long enough.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Emmett's Creek was a town of less than five hundred, including the outlying farms and ranches. It was very much a family's town – lots of children, especially in the outlying families. The stores and shops were small, simple, and clean, for the most part, the people friendly but he noticed – the more days he spent among them – somewhat tense and harried. It was a relatively poor town, dependent more on barter and trade for sustenance and progress than hard currency. And that was mildly puzzling to Merlin, because from what he could gather, it was also a richly productive region.

Merlin, for his part, remained an enigma to the people, partly from his close-mouthed avoidance of every interaction, partly from their fear of his quickly infamous temper. But as the days passed, then weeks, and his temper saw no resurgent flare, and his presence on the streets amounted to little more than a silent lingering shadow, he began to blend into the lives of the people. He became an accepted piece of the scenery, like the off-duty ranch-hands who lounged perpetually against the corral by the livery, the blind dog who always lay by the dry-goods store's open door, and the dressmaker's twin daughters who jumped rope and chanted incessantly, effectively blocking the boardwalk between their mother's shop and the millinery next door.

This was Merlin's goal. The average farmer picking up supplies, or housewife stopping to gossip, would have been shocked to realize how minute were the details of their lives that Merlin knew or guessed accurately enough.

Gaius' comfortably one-sided conversations during the shingling of his office left Merlin free to organize his gleanings, to make connections, and to gain insights. He retained most of what he learned, on the principle that any bit of information, however trivial, could be the difference that gained or lost him his revenge, and meant life or death to himself or Padlow.

But. The old physician – and Merlin suspected that his wife Alice had something to do with it – insisted on giving him one day off every week. Refused to accept his help. So instead of trying to find a second job to work that single day, he saddled the old brown nag and… wandered.

Circling the town, high ground to low ground, leaving little trace of his passage through new-sown fields and ranges and small budding groves and orchards. A wood lay to the west, and the road to the outside world entered at the east and exited past the tavern at the northwest, dwindling to little more than a deerpath; roads to other towns lay further east.

He canvassed the western wood as he had the inhabited land, thoroughly and methodically, so he would be familiar with the terrain in any direction. He had an idea to leave the tavern and make his living quarters out-of-doors. For one, the warmer weather would soon make sleeping outside preferable anyway. And for another, he would be less tied to a job and the need to make money to pay for his room. He could still take his meals there, but it would throw the girl less in his path.

But on his third such day off, as the nag plodded through the thickening underbrush, stepping over the trunks of fallen trees, through the clinging strands of new spider webs and patchwork sunlight, he allowed his thoughts to turn to her.

Had he not known her to be the wife of a child-killer, and had he been the sort to have friends, they might have been friends. If he was being fair to her, he would have to admit, even to himself, that she was thoughtful and generous, hard-working and soft-spoken. She was just as much help in the tavern to Percy and Shasta as Gwen was, and still found time to run errands about the town. She would hum to herself under her breath as she worked, if she thought she was alone.

So how – how was she married to such a man? Why? He could tell from their few encounters that she wasn't lacking in sensitivity or intelligence. Surely she was aware of what sort of man her husband was.

The nag dislodged a rock on a slope, and slid a foot or so before catching her balance, and the jolt of it was enough to shake his thoughts free of the girl.

He pulled the nag to a halt and looked around, listening. A light breeze whispered with the leaves, and the birds high above whistled and chirped to one another. Between the trunks of towering oaks and sycamores and feathery evergreens, out over the leafy tops of seedlings he could see down into a sunny glen scattered with wildflowers.

It was a good place, he decided. Peaceful. No one to hear his screams, if he chanced to dream at night.

He squinted up at the trees and branches above him, weighing one against the next as he chose the one in which to make his home. Wolves and bears inhabited the woods, no doubt, and certainly coons, skunks, snakes. He needed a place to build a sturdy platform, maybe ten feet off the ground. There, that one was perfect – two thick branches sprung at right angles to each other at the same height, and very nearly horizontal. He'd borrow hatchet, rope, and nails from Gaius on the morrow, but for now…

Merlin stood in the saddle and caught one of the branches he'd chosen, swinging himself up lightly to stand, hand resting against the trunk beside him. The bark had gouged tiny pits in his palms, and his nostrils were filled with the pungently sweet smell of living wood. He gazed out toward the meadow a long while, letting his lungs regain their rhythm from his brief exertion, then contemplated the forest floor beneath him, where the nag was nosing a clump of new grass. Not too far to fall, he figured; it would be enough to kill the dream without killing himself.

And… if there was to be a future beyond the death of Padlow, he would need to save his money.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Another week passed.

Gaius continued to chat without expecting a response, and Merlin grew accustomed to the physician's peculiar brand of gruff cheerfulness. Shingling the roof was monotonous and repetitive, but Merlin pushed his pace to make sure his concentration didn't stray. More than once Gaius commented on it, and his wife Alice, the two times she stopped by to check their progress, tried in vain to tease a reason for it out of Merlin.

He finished the thirteenth row of wide pine shingles on the second half of the roof, and sat back on his heels for a moment at the street-side end of it to let the breeze cool his damp skin. He was now too far forward toward the peak to reach his work from the ladder, so his faith and all his weight rested on his previous handiwork.

From his vantage point he could see past Mike's Mercantile and the reeve's office, almost to the edge of town, and in the other direction, past the tavern to the tops of the trees where he'd begun his sleeping platform. He watched the women in their bonnets and long skirts with baskets over their elbows, walking the streets, shopping and gossiping. The clang of Elyan's blacksmith's hammer reached Merlin's ears a delayed second after it struck the anvil, and the scratching of Mike's broom was lost in the screams and laughter of the children playing on the sidewalks and darting across the streets, in turn occasionally trumped by the rumble and jingle of a passing wagon and team. The dressmaker's twins jumped rope and chanted.

It looked an ordinary, well-behaved town with amiable citizens. With no vengeance to be bought and paid for, no blood feuds to pay and repay again. A place where he could settle down and send out roots, a place to relax and be productive instead of destructive.

A tempting mirage, that.

Freya stepped from Mike's dry goods store across the street, closing the door behind her, adjusting the basket at her elbow, carefully skirting the blind dog on the boardwalk. Over the past weeks she'd put a little weight on her thin frame and lost some of the timidity in her manner that he'd noticed his first night in Emmett's Creek. And when she smiled she could almost be pretty.

And he was going to kill her.

At the end of the boardwalk she stopped to speak to a little boy who'd chased a ball almost to the edge of her skirt. She bent down to his level, the scarf over her hair fluttering in the breeze, and the boy tossed the ball, throwing his head back to laugh. Merlin was smiling in response to the happy, open look on her face before he even knew it.

Up the alley behind Freya stormed a stout farmwife, sleeves rolled up and fists on her hips – Merlin remembered her name to be Ida, the wife of the pig farmer Cedric – and he recognized trouble instantly. Before he had time to draw breath, to call out a warning, even to decide if he should involve himself, Ida had grabbed the boy's arm with one hand and Freya's with the other. She moved the boy behind her wide skirt with as much gentleness as she conversely shook Freya viciously, clearly bawling her out for some perceived injury.

And then her hand came around and slapped the girl full in the face.

Both Freya's hands covered her one reddening cheek, but Ida's diatribe continued – Merlin couldn't hear her words, but obviously plenty of others around could. And he was sufficiently used to watching a person's lips to gather their conversation to see that the woman was berating Freya for talking to her son, and called her more than one filthy name which basically meant _prostitute_.

What? He leaned forward intently, trying to deduce more of the speech.

"Merlin?" Gaius' voice – abrupt and close – interrupted concentration.

Merlin jumped and gravity pulled him back. He aimed the claw end of the hammer at the last row of shingles in a vain attempt to catch himself – was airborne – landed on his back in the alley in a thud of dust.

Gaius bent above him, speaking, worried, reaching down with his uninjured hand – Merlin struggled to breathe, furious with himself.

"I didn't mean to startle you, my boy," were the first of Gaius' words he understood.

He gasped. His lungs burned, and the dust settled in his nostrils, and he had no breath to sneeze. And gasped again.

"I am so sorry, Merlin," Gaius said again as he took his elbow to help him to his feet.

The old physician glanced out to the street at the same time as he did, as Freya whisked past, scarf slid back over her short-cut hair. One hand clutched her basket close, the other tried simultaneously to wipe and shield her tears from sight.

Gaius took two steps to the street and turned, with the air of intending to follow her, then heaved a sigh and stopped, watching after her for a moment. Merlin's chest heaved another breath, and he sneezed and coughed at once. Gaius looked back at him with a gaze pure, piercing, and knowing, as if he'd somehow connected Merlin's fall with Freya's tears.

Merlin turned his back and ascended the ladder once again, still concentrating on dragging breath into his burning lungs. It wasn't too far for a fall, and as all his bones and joints seemed to be functioning without too much pain, he determined to work on as hard as ever, punishing himself for his moment of inattention.

After three shingles, Gaius' white-haired head rose above the edge of the roof, and he reached up to lay another single handful of shingles where Merlin would need them in a short while. It was the same routine they'd followed for the last month or so; this time Gaius lingered.

"Reeve Whatley told me, the only interest you've shown in anyone or anything was Padlow," the old man mused. "He was asking me again the other day, did I know what business keeps you in town."

Merlin grunted between the nails in his mouth and kept hammering. The reeve had come to the tavern more nights than not, but had ignored Merlin at his table in the corner.

"Alice has some interesting ideas about your fits," Gaius continued. "She says it's like you've got a black beast sitting on your heart, howling day and night that won't let you rest. Driving you." Merlin shifted impatiently and reached for another shingle. "What is it you think you'll find in Emmett's Creek?" Gaius asked him directly. "Are you running from something – a fugitive of the law, maybe?"

An image flashed into Merlin's thoughts with a pang of regret – the memory of the bleeding body of the blonde agent sent to conscript him into Uther's service. He shook his head and shifted his weight to the next section of roof. He'd pay for that crime when it caught up with him – no use borrowing trouble on that score. "Tracking one down," he said only.

"Padlow?" Merlin had to give Gaius credit for intelligence; he made a noncommittal sound at the physician's guess. "Are you one of Uther's agents?"

It was a thought. That claim would give him some power in the town, some prestige, some authority. Until Reeve Whatley demanded to see his writ – which, of course, he didn't have. But he didn't have to deny it, either.

"What are you planning?" Gaius pressed. "Padlow won't be back in town until snow flies."

Merlin turned abruptly on the roof to look directly into the physician's mild gray eyes. "Why do you want to know?" he said. "So you can warn him?"

Gaius smiled gently, and patted the new roof and shingles. "Padlow never listens to a word I say," he commented. "I was thinking of Freya."

Merlin swung back around to nail another shingle. Gaius disappeared down the ladder, but when he returned with another handful of shingles tucked inside his sling, he wasn't through.

"Uther's agent or not, you plan to have it out with Padlow," the old man said, and it wasn't a question. "I can't say he doesn't deserve punishment, but it's a fact that he's older than you, and meaner. When the two of you meet, I don't want Freya getting hurt. Whatever he did that set you on his trail, she has no part in it."

"Of course she does," Merlin retorted, slamming the hammer down. "She's his family. She's his wife."

Gaius said only, "Hm." And went for another stack of shingles.

Merlin spent the rest of the day wondering if he'd just dropped a knife into his own foot. He didn't think Gaius was the type to reveal confidences – he was the physician after all, used to keeping patients' secrets – but the last thing he needed was the whole town knowing he was a revenger, and who his target was.

"Funny thing about family," Gaius ventured, as they were cleaning up for the day. "Sometimes you choose who your family is, and sometimes you don't."

_And sometimes your family is butchered before you know a thing about it_. Merlin dropped his armful of broken shingles right where he stood, and walked away.

**A/N: A bit of name-dropping in this chapter, I realize. Explanations forthcoming, I promise… **


	4. Cloudy or Fair

**Chapter 4: Cloudy or Fair**

Each night for about a month the stranger – Merlin – had claimed the same seat in the corner, a bowl of Shasta's soup of the day, and a single mug of beer.

Freya had long since stopped expecting kindness or courtesy from any save Percy and Shasta, Gwen and Gaius, and it puzzled her how a man who could look at her with such potent hate in his blue eyes could also be the only one in the room to acknowledge her with civility. And the night he said a quiet _thank you_ as she set his dinner before him, it piqued a curiosity that wouldn't die.

She'd survived the last four and a half years making herself scarce, part of the scenery, part of the furniture. It had saved her much pain and embarrassment, and she didn't mind being ignored if it meant she would be left alone. But she was aware that Merlin watched her, every evening, with a silent intensity that directly contrasted with the neutrality with which he studied every other person in the room.

_Why should I interest him?_ she often wondered, going about her daily chores at the tavern. He'd never approached her to speak to her, but he'd been in town over a month, and no one knew what kept him there.

Drifters had blown through Emmett's Creek before, but Merlin stayed. Why? And what, if anything, did it have to do with her? He was no ordinary drifter – the fire and passion in his eyes, the fit tone of his body deliberately maintained, and his inexplicable dedication to the work on Gaius' office, when no other able-bodied man dared lend a hand, all set him apart. Drifters wore a numb, distanced look, and cared only that their bellies were full and their desire for drink satiated, and both with as little cost to them as possible. Merlin was no drifter.

_A hunter, then_? she thought as she slipped between the regular evening revelers. He had the look of a hunter, only this wasn't the season for it.

A tipsy ranch hand stepped backwards into her, landing his bootheel on her toes and jostling her tray of drinks so that beer splashed liberally down the front of the dress she was wearing – one of Gwen's cast-offs – and she gasped at the sudden drenching. There was silence for a moment in a little circle all around her. Then, as she headed for the kitchen without lifting her eyes, she heard the snickering start, and spread.

Percy and Shasta were both busy behind the bar, and Gwen had just turned the other way balancing a full tray of her own; Freya pushed into the empty kitchen alone, and sank down at the small table in the corner with a dish towel to try to mop her damp clothing. On top of her humiliation at Ida's hands that afternoon, it was suddenly more than she could take, and tears filled her eyes.

Then the kitchen door swung open, startling her, and she reached quickly to brush the tears from her cheeks before looking to see who had entered.

"Oh, Gaius," she said with relief. But the old physician's compassionate expression and the kind twinkle in his blue eyes caused tears to prick at her eyes again.

"How are you?" he said. "May I sit with you for a minute?" At her nod, he lowered himself into another chair. "Now, what's troubling you?" She searched for words to explain, and not finding any, only shrugged miserably. "This afternoon?" he said wisely. She nodded, touching the corner of her eye to prevent another tear from slipping. "It's human nature to want to be liked and accepted," he commented. "And it's a hard thing when the reason you're not liked or accepted isn't your fault."

"I just wish sometimes that they would give me a chance," Freya said. "I know that Padlow – that things are rough for a lot of people, making ends meet, but…"

"You wish they wouldn't judge you by him," Gaius finished for her. He leaned forward, setting his hands on his knees deliberately. "That's easy to understand. But it doesn't seem like anyone associated with Padlow has much of a chance at fairness, though – and the way everyone sees it, they're on one side, and you're on the other."

"Sometimes I don't know what the right thing to do is," Freya confessed. "But I know it's right for a wife to respect her husband. No matter how many times he – no matter what he does, I should behave with respect, even if I don't feel it."

Gaius shook his head. "Little of what he does seems right to me," he said. "But I cannot tell you to go against your conscience. It is a matter for you, and you alone, to decide."

She nodded. "I guess if that means people take their anger for my husband out on me, I'll just have to keep bearing it."

"It's a heavy burden," Gaius observed, with keen gentleness. "But you have friends who would help you bear it." Freya nodded again, to herself, and straightened her shoulders. "Speaking of heavy burdens," the old physician continued with deceptive mildness, "I hate to add to yours, but it would be a disservice not to warn you."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Merlin," Gaius said, and a scared, excited thrill ran up her spine. "He's another one carrying a heavy burden. Today he as much as said it's due to Padlow, and he's come here to rid himself of that burden. He means your husband no good, that's for sure, and… well…"

"You think Merlin might intend to harm me?" Freya said. That would explain his attitude toward her.

After a hesitant moment, Gaius gave a troubled nod. "Just be careful around him," he said. "I don't mean to say he's planning anything against you, just…"

"I'll be on my guard," Freya promised.

"Good girl," Gaius approved, taking his leave.

Aside from his quick actions to save Freya from the dart Burton had thrown, Merlin had never touched her. Never spoken to her except in response. Never made a move toward her, only watched her. And hated her. Lately he'd been leaving with the last of the evening customers, and stopping by the kitchen in the mornings to have cold scraps wrapped up for his lunch – these were the only times she saw him anymore.

Was he waiting for an opportunity?

Freya was hardly ever alone, except for when she slept, and even then, she shared a side room off the tavern's kitchen with Gwen, as much to protect herself from Burton as it was a natural consequence of working at the tavern. And if she went out on an errand, the streets were full of other shoppers, workmen, loiterers.

At least she knew now why he hated her. The same reason everyone hated her – Padlow and his treatment of them. Even Burton had no friends, though most were too afraid of him to say so to his face. There were plenty to buy him drinks when he was in town, in the hopes that he would remember their generosity and influence Padlow on their behalf.

But a month went by after Gaius' warning, then two, with no offer of violence on Gaius' part toward her. The curiosity that had begun at his politeness in spite of his unspoken hatred grew as she speculated on the specific cause for his hatred. And she began to pity him for whatever wrong he had suffered at Padlow's hand.

There were a couple of incidents when fights broke out – once when Percy had been trying to a show a drunken cowhand to the door just as Merlin came in, and the cowhand had taken the first swing – and once again when Cedric had tried again to talk to Merlin, and had shoved the stranger in his frustration at Merlin's disinclination to hear him out. But both times it could be argued that the fight had not been started by the stranger, and Whatley – absent both times – hadn't locked any of them in the jail.

And with the roof finished, Merlin and Gaius – his arm healed but still not full-strength - had begun work on rebuilding the inside furniture. Shelves, desk, cabinets, table, cots… Freya wondered if the work was as endless as it seemed, or if one or the other of the men intentionally drew it out.

One cloudy afternoon in early summer, Freya left town on foot, heading west into the woods. There were meadows and clearings scattered through the forested hills, and she wanted to enjoy an hour or two of rare solitude in spite of the questionable weather and gather some roots and blossoms for drying.

As she knelt in the high grass to cut a handful of tough stems with the small knife she carried in her basket, she thought on the strange sequence of events in Emmett's Creek that spring – the fire that had half-destroyed Gaius' office, the old physician's injury as he'd tried to save valuable supplies and medicines, Padlow's departure. Merlin's arrival.

An ominous rumble sounded high overhead, and a sudden brisk wind gusted the untied edges of her shawl. She looked up at the sky, the low dark wisps scudding along under the slate-gray underside of rain clouds. It was time to head back to town, to keep dry and safe in the tavern – these sudden summer thunderstorms could be violent, sometimes.

She piled her gathered bounty carefully in the basket, rose, and turned – right into a patter of fat raindrops. The blossoms and grass stalks in the clearing bent before the wind, and the sudden rush of rain.

No time to make it to town, then. Freya ran for the trees.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Another day off, that Merlin didn't want. Another morning spent hiking the woods, criss-crossing the land, learning, familiarizing, memorizing. Necessary or not, at least it kept him busy.

Today he was on foot, never taking the same route twice, but he was closer to his sleeping platform in the woods than town, when the first raindrop fell. He had a heavy oilcloth he slept under to ward off the dew; it would be sufficient protection from the rain. It felt good, as warm as the weather was, and did him almost as much good as a thorough bath. His skin was slick with sweat under his shirt, so he unbuttoned it and took it off, slinging it over his elbow, to let the rain wash over his body – thinking with satisfaction of Gaius' finished roof. The storm would cause no worries, there.

He was almost to his tree when he saw her.

She was kneeling in the mud, a basket of draggled flowers next to her, the shawl draped over her head offering scant protection; it looked to be soaking through quickly. She had found his platform and sought refuge beneath it, though it was too high off the ground to be much use against the slanting rain.

Merlin stopped in his tracks. She hadn't seen him yet; he could still turn and make his way back to town to avoid her… getting wetter by the minute. Sharing an oilcloth was better than that, he figured. Even with her.

Moving forward, he deliberately set his boot on a twig, which was still dry enough to snap audibly above the pattering of the rain. She startled like a yearling doe at the sound – her eyes widened when they found him. He half-expected her to bolt. She hadn't shown fear of him in the jail cell, nor ever at the tavern, but she'd been avoiding him for almost two months, since he'd revealed to Gaius the aim of his stay in Emmett's Creek. Gaius had likely warned her, but now they were alone in the woods almost a league away from town… _he_ wouldn't have trusted someone like him to approach.

And it occurred to him that now might be the perfect time.

He could kill her easily with his bare hands, and have the rest of the night to bury her body where none would ever find her. He'd seen enough of the way she was treated to know that no one but the physician and the bartender would push for a murderer to be found and punished – though there would be plenty suspicious of him, and Gaius would be sure of his guilt.

And then, when he had Padlow where he wanted him, on his knees in agony, he would describe in detail the death of his wife, before he killed him, too.

If he was going to do it, now would be the time. Now, before he learned any more about her to make him admire her, pity her. Before he changed his mind.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Freya had seen the hate in his eyes, and learned that her husband was to blame. She'd seen Merlin fight like a wildcat at no more provocation than the touch of a man's hand. She'd seen the violence he was capable of, and had taken Gaius' warning seriously.

But his instincts had been to protect her from Burton, before he knew either of them. And associated hate did not have to lead to violence against her.

She took a deep breath, and smiled at him as he approached, soaked and with his shirt over his elbow. It seemed to throw him off his guard just a little – he stopped for a moment, looking at her, utterly unself-conscious about his half-undressed state, then moved around the tree she was kneeling beside. She turned, following him with her eyes as he leaped nimbly up onto the trunk. He was halfway up before she realized that there were uneven sections of tree branch nailed to the trunk for a crude ladder.

He paused, leaning around the trunk to look down at her, sodden black hair plastered close around his face and expression inscrutable. "You coming?" he said.

If she followed, what would he do? But a man wouldn't offer invitation to someone he intended to harm, would he?

She hooked her basket over her elbow and followed, damp skirts getting in her way. When she reached the platform, he had already unfolded a large oilcloth to hang over a branch above them. He didn't reach to help her from ladder to platform, but she was unused to such courtesies, and clambered to safety by herself.

"There's a nail, there and there," he said shortly, indicating where she should fasten the edges of the cloth. She watched him, then mimicked his actions on her side, to form a small tent above the platform.

He was seated before she was through, long legs crossed to give her space, shoving his arms through the sleeves of his shirt but not bothering to button it up in front. She set her basket near the edge of the platform and tried to seat herself gracefully – not an easy thing considering the unevenness of the branches forming the platform. The heel of her overlarge shoe caught for a moment, and she lost her balance. She flung out her arms, knocking the basket over the edge.

Without thinking, she lunged to catch it – and sprawled half-off the platform, Merlin's iron grip around her wrist keeping her from tumbling to the ground after the basket. He righted her without comment and seemingly without effort.

She tucked her skirts around her legs, embarrassed. "Thank you," she said softly.

Moments passed. They listened to the patter of rain on the oilcloth. She removed her shawl and spread it across her knees to dry as much as possible.

"So this is where you live, now," Freya said finally, to break the silence. He didn't bother to answer, didn't even glance at her. "Why are you so quiet?" she asked him directly, trying to keep from offending him with her tone; she meant it as an honest question.

Merlin took his time, but finally responded, "Not much to say."

His voice was low and even, no trace of anger. Maybe it was a risk, but, "Merlin, why do you hate me?" she said, then.

He turned and looked her full in the face for the first time that day. And, for the first time, his blue eyes were empty of hate. Just empty.

"How did you come to know my name?" he said. Not as an answer to her question, and not as if he wanted to change the subject, but as if he hadn't even heard her properly.

She blushed a little. "The days you were – ill – you said many things. Merlin is your name, isn't it?"

His eyebrows, ink-black like his hair, drew together angrily, and she looked away. "You told others my name," he said, and there was a menace to his voice. "Did you tell anything else of what you heard?"

"I – No, I said nothing," she stammered, glancing back up. His gaze pierced her like a shaft of light. "Honestly. I understood little of what you – said."

He turned his head so she could no longer see his eyes, and it surprised her that she wanted to. He was very close to her, she could see each hair that made the rough blur of stubble on his chin. He had a freckle behind his ear. She noticed also the line of his collarbone through his open collar and the outline of his muscle through his sleeve stretched taut and damp over his arm.

She looked away abruptly, pulled her wet scarf off and began to comb through her short damp hair with her fingers.

"Did you talk to Gaius?" he asked, startling her a little.

"Not lately," she said, then realized the question was a follow-up to his previous one. "I told him only that you were restless in your sleep and spoke out occasionally."

"He wanted to know what I said?"

"He didn't ask, specifically," she answered.

"Would you have told him if he had?" Those deep blue eyes were back on her, she knew. She could feel it.

She wrung out her scarf and retied it over her hair. "If I thought it affected his care of you as a patient, maybe," she said honestly. She waited a moment, risked a glance, then ventured, "The dreams are very real, aren't they?"

His eyes closed. He swallowed, then nodded. And turned his face away from her again. He didn't move, but she could see that every muscle in his body was rock hard with tension. She reached to touch his shoulder, to offer comfort, then stopped and drew back. Padlow would backhand her without thinking, if she did the same to him.

"I still dream of my mother sometimes," she said. He still didn't move. "She died when I was fourteen years old. It was only a few days after that, that Padlow married me. The nightmares are often very real."

"How did your mother die?" His voice was husky.

"A lung disease," Freya said. "She coughed all winter. We knew she likely wouldn't recover, and made arrangements for me to travel to stay with a distant cousin of hers. Padlow was supposed to take me there. But instead he married me. And here I am."

"Your father?" he said.

"I never knew him," she said without bitterness. "He left when he found out she was expecting me." He turned his head again and studied her coolly, no readable emotion in his eyes. She grew uncomfortable, aware again of his proximity, and Gaius' suspicions. "What?" she said.

"How well do you know him?" he said, and she knew he meant her husband.

"I don't know," she answered, confused. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"When he travels, he always leaves you here?"

She nodded. "Percy and Shasta let me stay at the tavern whenever he's gone, and I help out as much as I can in return."

"And what does he tell you of his travels?" Merlin asked.

Freya hesitated. If this man was one of Uther's agents, she was required to answer all his questions as truthfully as she could. But it wasn't right for her to betray or vilify her husband, especially to a stranger – whether she liked it or not, her loyalty belonged to Padlow.

"Not much," she said. "He spends most of the year collecting Uther's taxes for this region, and when he comes back he discusses the trip with Burton – they're partners. And he keeps a record book."

Merlin made no movement, but she sensed his focus drawing to a point. It was very like a thundercloud piling up on itself before breaking loose in a terrible storm. She waited, but he asked nothing further for a long time, staring out in the rain and dimming light.

"So, not a peddler," he mused, finally. "Tax farmer."

She shivered. The impression of sharp intelligence was something new from Merlin, and added to the intense hatred and nearly-ruthless violence she'd seen in him before, it frightened her. She was afraid of what he'd find out about Padlow, what he might already know – things she didn't, but suspected from rumors and gossip about town – she was afraid of what he'd do.

"Do you want to try to make it back to town before nightfall?" he asked. It was such an unexpectedly ordinary question, it threw her a little off balance.

"I should," she answered slowly. "No one will notice but Percy and Shasta and Gwen, but they may worry."

"Is your home near here?" he said.

"Three and a half leagues north-west," she replied. "So it's closer to go to town, and safer for me anyway… because of Burton."

"His partner," Merlin said, as if to himself. "It was typical behavior for him to throw that dart at you?"

"Yes," she admitted, embarrassed.

"And – your husband – he does nothing to stop his partner from abusing his wife?" Freya couldn't see his face, but she heard the contempt clearly.

"Burton doesn't do it when he's around." She hesitated, not wanting to speak ill of her husband. "Padlow was raised by his father," she hedged. "He doesn't see anything wrong with the way – anybody – treats me."

"Does he love you?" It was growing too dark for her to make out his expression from his profile.

"You'd have to ask him that," she said softy.

A long silence followed. Freya imagined the steady drip-drip on the oilcloth was lessening.

"It's getting dark, you should go," Merlin said abruptly, moving to his knees and reaching to untie the edges of the sheltering oilcloth.

Freya got to her feet, half-bent over under the tented material, and arranged her drying shawl over her shoulders. "Thank you for letting me stay here to keep dry." He ignored her, so she swung herself around the tree trunk and descended to the ground on the pieces of wood serving as a ladder.

He wasn't far behind her, climbing down with the oilcloth bundled in one arm. He'd discarded his shirt again, perhaps to keep it as dry as possible, and as he stretched down to the last step, the muscles in his back and shoulders bunched and stretched under his wet skin. She noticed a thick white scar on his back, neatly set between two ribs, a short straight scar; she blushed to catch herself watching him and turned away, and so was unprepared for him to drape the oilcloth over and around her.

"I can't take this," she protested, but he was already gone, to return a moment later with her basket.

"You know your way?" he said, shoving her basket into her hands before wrapping the trailing edges of the cloth clumsily but securely around her.

"Yes, I won't get lost," she said. "But you – you'll be soaked through. You might catch a chill."

"What would that matter to anyone?" he said, devastatingly casual.

"Gaius would miss you – he says you did a good job on his shelves. And I – Shasta and Gwen would hate to think of you out here by yourself, and sick."

"It's happened before, and it'll happen again. Anyway it's the wrong season for catching chills. Go." He gave her a little push.

She looked over her shoulder to say, "Thank you again. And good-bye." Expecting no response, she only smiled to herself when he turned away.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Pillowing his head on his mostly-dry shirt, Merlin could get no rest, though the rain stopped shortly before midnight. He was impatient for morning's first light, to find his way to the home of his enemy.

Since coming to Emmett's Creek, he had learned that Padlow didn't live in town, but a good distance away, in a place he had hitherto been unable to locate. He'd been reluctant to ask anyone more specifically for fear of revealing the intentions that so far Gaius hadn't repeated – and of course he couldn't ask the physician to _help_ him – but now he had a good idea where to look.

If the records Freya had referred to were accurate, they could be the key he'd been looking for. The reason. The all-important _why_ that had been burning him night and day for more than two years.

The complaint of landholders and tradespeople against tax collectors everywhere was the grudge the people of Emmett's Creek held against Padlow; it made _sense_ now that Merlin knew that detail. Uther required certain set amounts and certain percentages, and to avoid the hassle and expense of sending the agents on his own payroll out about the countryside, he sold the privilege of collecting taxes. These tax farmers owed Uther the balance of the taxes of the region for which they were responsible every year, and anything they collected above this amount was their profit. Since the tax questions of how much, from whom, and how often, were changing constantly and could baffle even the most honest of lawyers, the average farmer, storekeeper, and rancher could never hope to know how much of the taxes they paid went to Uther's treasury and how much lined the tax farmer's pocket.

So the tax farmer's reputation and level of job difficulty depended to some extent on the people believing they were being treated fairly and respectfully, on whether the tax farmer would make allowances in consideration of unforeseen circumstances, whether he would accept payment in kind, or demand coin money.

All this Merlin remembered hearing at a young age from conversations between his mother and father, though he couldn't recall Padlow's name ever being mentioned. Though it was a rare tax collector who didn't require the cooperation of the shire's reeve, or even a few hired strong-arms on occasion. From his observation of Emmett's Creek, Padlow and Reeve Whatley were hand-in-glove, and Burton was the threat that kept those living here in submission during the months when Padlow was gone.

He'd never seen the tax farmer for the region where his family's farm lay. His father had always ridden into town to pay their family's portion, but every time he'd returned convinced that their collector was an out-and-out thief.

And he had eventually begun to claim that he could prove it.

If there was anything at all in Padlow's records linking him to Merlin's hometown region, or even his father's farm, he would at least be able to guess at the reason his family was butchered. And he had grounds for his revenge against Padlow when he took it.

Revenge was a marginally legal operation. As long as the revenger – whether a hired professional like Morgana or the victim's next-of-kin – could prove the injury before a reeve or agent, the law allowed an eye for an eye. When no proof could be found, and a revenger chose to take the job anyway, it was murder and could be punished. If a victim was lacking a willing and able next-of-kin, or the family or friends were not wealthy enough to hire a revenger, and no agent or reeve cared enough to push the issue, nothing was done.

In the case of Merlin's family, there was no one but him. He was lucky to have been found by a professional revenger willing to take him on as an apprentice and teach him the trade.

There was another thought skirting around the edges of Merlin's mind – the question of the girl. The wife. Who was left behind for months at a time, who was abused by the partner and the rest of the town without repercussion, who came to Percy and Shasta half-starved and wearing cast-off clothing, and who couldn't answer if her husband loved her. Merlin's father would never have dreamed of treating his mother in such a manner. Percy didn't allow anyone to touch or speak to Shasta in a way he didn't approve. Morgana would have slit the man's throat herself. If Padlow didn't care much, it wouldn't hurt him to lose her. Not the way Merlin wanted him to hurt – the tearing agony of something vital and precious ripped away forever.

Maybe he should wait until he could judge their relationship firsthand.

When the darkness began graying to light, Merlin stretched his stiff muscles, dressed, and descended to the ground to head three and a half leagues northwest, to search for Padlow's home.

When he found it, he almost passed it before he realized what he'd found. It was little more than a hovel, the smallest sort of cabin, with a moss-stuffed roof and a stable behind that was almost as big as the house, but empty. Merlin was surprised; he had expected Padlow made a substantial profit from his excessive tax farming, and would have had a more expensive lifestyle.

He crouched behind a large bush for half of an hour, to make sure Padlow's partner Burton was nowhere around – the trapper was at his leisure during the fine-weather months to fish and hunt as he pleased, and none dared deny him meal or bunk when he came knocking.

Merlin frowned to himself. If the wealth Padlow was fleecing from the people of the region was not in his personal property, where was it?

As the sun rose over the edge of the trees, and Merlin was satisfied Burton was nowhere in the immediate vicinity, he skirted the hovel once, then lifted the latch and ducked inside. Leaving the door open to let the sunlight illuminate the one windowless room, he began on the right side. A neat pile of worn and faded quilts lay on a musty straw mattress in a bed frame that shared two sides with the log walls. Beneath the bed were shoved two bundles of furs, wrapped and tied too tightly for Merlin to tell if they concealed anything; he didn't have the time to take them apart to see, and doubted his ability to retie them without rousing suspicions in the mind of their owner.

A stack of coarsely chopped firewood poked from the woodbox in the corner, and a fairly clean oven squatted on the hearth – unused, Merlin guessed, since Padlow had departed and Freya had come to Percy's tavern. The ashes in the fireplace were cold and long dead. A table and two rickety chairs were the only furniture on the other side of the room.

And on the uneven wooden mantel above the fireplace, he found what he'd been looking for – a stack of tattered pages sewn together into a journal. It was still too dim in the room to read, but he doubted that the scrawled, blotted handwriting belonged to Freya, just as he doubted Burton could read or write.

He stepped to the open door, into the sunlight, and swept a keen gaze carefully over the forest, as far as he could see. Nothing… no one. He was still alone. Thumbing open the scrawled, smudged pages at random, he took a moment to decipher several lines of the murderer's handwriting. The names of Emmett's Creek folk were the easiest to make out – Percy, Elyan, Mike, Gaius. The numbers next to them only slightly less so.

Only – he had never paid taxes. He had nothing to compare the figures to, nothing to confirm his suspicions… so. Go to the source, Morgana had taught him, when trying to verify information.

Merlin tucked the pages into his shirt as he gave the hut a final glance, then left.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

"Alice?" Freya called, ready to retreat if the physician's wife was with one of the townspeople.

"Back here – Freya, isn't it?"

She let the door of the physician's office close behind her, looking around and inhaling the new-wood smell of the furniture. Even though the building had not been completely rebuilt, the signs of the fire were only there if you knew what to look for. She followed the sound of the older woman's voice, through the large front room – lined with shelves of books, medicines, other supplies, the few guest-chairs arranged in the middle of the room – down the hall. She peeked into both of the examination rooms – each furnished with cot and chairs – and the more private office where Gaius kept records, another desk, a bench against the side wall.

Alice was in the back room, what might have functioned as a kitchen if the building were a home, the preparation area with the fireplace and a water pump, the raw materials of the physicians' trade locked safely away. Gaius' wife was rinsing rags in a large basin of water, pinning them to a in-door line that spanned the width of the room.

"So you've lost your husband as well as your helper," Freya said lightly, commenting on the fact that both Merlin and Gaius had left Emmett's Creek that week.

"So it seems," Alice agreed placidly. "I would have liked to have gone with Gaius to Camelot, but…" She shrugged her plump shoulders and gave Freya a glance over the makeshift wash-line. "He said he thought Merlin had business there to look into as well."

Freya leaned against the high block-counter in the middle of the room. "Maybe Gaius was wrong about him," she said.

Alice frowned in thought, then shook her head. "No," she said. "He'll be back, sooner or later. He hasn't forgiven, and he hasn't forgotten."

"At least your office is fully furnished again," Freya commented, lifting her errand-basket to the countertop.

"Merlin did a good job of it, too," Alice agreed. "Not a single leak. He's got the makings of a good man in there, somewhere. It's a pity…"

"What's a pity?" Freya said.

The physician's wife sighed and gave her a wry smile. "Whatever happened to make him like he is."

"I think he could be very kind," Freya said, half to herself, but saw that Alice had heard. The older woman said nothing further, but looked as if she didn't know whether to smile or frown.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Gaius caught up with Merlin his second day on the road.

The old physician had given him a small amount of coin to pay for his extra work on the internal furnishings, and because he no longer owed Percy for the use of a bedroom, he'd been able to pay Elyan, who owned the livery stable as well as the smith's forge, what he owed for the care of the nag – thus canceling his debt and giving him the use of the horse once again. He'd hoped to be able to buy a better mount, but the nag served its purpose, and he wasn't exactly in a hurry. Gaius' filly, by contrast, was high-stepping and spirited, and so had no trouble closing the distance, though the old physician rode a light two-person cart rather than a saddle.

Merlin heard the hoofbeats and wheel-rattle behind him, but didn't turn, not even when the physician pulled the filly to a slow walk just ahead of Merlin's nag.

"Do you mind if I share the journey with you?" Gaius said.

"If I said yes, would you go on your way?"

Gaius only smiled, and said, "You're going to Camelot, aren't you?"

"If you journey with me, I guess you'll find out," Merlin retorted.

"Well, that's where I'm headed. I need some supplies for my practice, and I like to read the latest medical journals occasionally, see what my brothers-in-arms are up to. If we share a room, we can save money. And maybe you can work off that other debt to me a little more." His eyes were twinkling when Merlin looked across at him. "Don't think I don't know that you've been avoiding me."

Merlin shook his head, but found it difficult to feel any anger toward the physician. There was too much anticipation for what he might find when they reached the capital… Camelot.

**A/N: Okay, so review questions have been, generally speaking, concerning 3 issues. 1) The why of the murders – hopefully this chapter has gone a long way to answering that. 2) The question of Arthur/the blonde agent – next chapter, I promise! 3) Freya's marriage – that'll take a few more chapters, but Merlin will hear that story before the end!**

**Also, when I say "Camelot", don't think "the lower town and the citadel", but more along the lines of a semi-western capital city. More description forthcoming, in the next chapter…**


	5. The Cost of Freedom

**Chapter 5: The Cost of Freedom**

It took Merlin and Gaius five full days to reach Camelot, and most of the conversation was one-sided. The physician, as always, seemed content to talk without reply, though, and Merlin figured if the old man's unspoken conjectures satisfied him, who was he to care if they were right or wrong?

Camelot was the second-largest city in all the lands Uther controlled, a busy, bustling center of commerce and growing industry. Uther's palace and the adjacent villas of the prosperous and influential were on the north side, the warehouses and livestock holding-pens on the west toward the river. The east and south sections of the city were comprised of smaller-scale businesses and homes of the city's inhabitants. The squares where the government officials lived and controlled their various arenas of power was right in the middle of Camelot.

Merlin and Gaius found a small private room above a tavern slightly rougher in character than Percy's Place, just outside the governing section of the city. And while Gaius browsed the stalls and shops to stock his medical supplies, Merlin wandered unobtrusively to the courtyards where monetary affairs were settled with Uther's agents. Here again, direct questioning would only bring scrutiny down on himself, which he didn't want.

Tax farmers from all over the country came and went, as well as a few private citizens on personal errands who could afford to leave their land or business for a few days' travel. Merlin drifted through knots of merchants deep in discussion, behind desks of various agents recording payments from collectors, arguing with farmers and shopkeepers who'd traveled days and weeks, in some cases, to bring grievances to the top.

Merlin's ears were waiting for two things – mention of his birthplace, or Padlow's name.

The first day he heard neither, but he learned that the records kept by Uther's agents were stored in the city's library. He made a mental note to check those records against the ones written by Padlow, which lay in his saddlebags in a corner of their room.

The second day he overheard a conversation between two farmers, comfortable in neat dark suits, who'd just turned away from a long meeting with one of the agents, and spoke in low tones, but he caught the name he'd been waiting to hear. He fell in behind them as they left the courtyard, keeping close enough to catch the gist of the conversation, but running no risk of being noticed in the busyness of the street. Women shopped and gossiped, children played and ran errands, men with carts or riding horses bought, sold, or just traveled through, just like in Emmett's Creek, but on a much grander scale.

The wealthy farmers had come to Camelot, so it seemed, to complain of Padlow's cheating and deception to the agents in the hopes that something would be done. They were not optimistic after their meeting, but they had a secondary purpose which made Merlin's foot twist on the curb and almost sent him sprawling into the mud in front of a draft horse and cart.

They were from a town neighbor to Ealdor, his birthplace, and they discussed with the air of repeating what had already been said many times the rumor of a family butchered by the tax farmer to keep his excesses from being revealed.

Merlin's father. His family.

Evidently part of their outrage stemmed from the fact that nothing had been done to find and punish the murderer – Padlow being the primary suspect – in the two years since the tragedy, and the result was that Padlow's power of intimidation had increased throughout their shire. Merlin marveled at the irony of his headlong flight from Ealdor, his intention being to put as much distance between himself and his former home as possible, after his own crime. Had he stayed, he might have learned the identity of the killer, and maybe even found opportunity to confront him much sooner.

Had he stayed, he might have been executed for murder. And surely wouldn't have gained the training necessary to succeed in his revenge.

Merlin also gathered, from looks and gestures more than from their words, that they were to some degree also intimidated by Padlow's violence. They were nervous that he'd learn of their trip and deal them and their families the same injustice dealt to Balinor.

Uther, or at least his agents, now knew of the suspicions and accusations of Padlow's questionable dealings. Merlin had two choices – he could work to prove his revenge of Padlow justified, even turn him over to the agents, or he could simply proceed with his plan to murder the murderer. Perhaps he'd take a day to investigate the records at the city library, and make his decision then. And if Padlow's records proved valuable as evidence against him, Merlin would spare Freya for leading him to them, though unknowingly.

When Merlin returned to the room he and Gaius had rented for their stay, the old physician was busy at the small bedside table dividing different colored mounds of powder into smaller twists of paper. After the first few inquiries into the status of Merlin's business answered with nothing but silence, Gaius had stopped asking directly, but hadn't surrendered his curiosity.

"Do you feel like a trip to the library tomorrow?" Gaius said, not looking up. "If you're free, that is."

_Irony_, Merlin thought. He didn't reply, just threw himself down on his cot and stretched his legs out.

"I've purchased everything I need, this trip," Gaius went on, his eyes still on his task. "I wanted to spend a day reading the journals and talking to my brother physicians, before we – I – return to Emmett's Creek."

Merlin responded in a bored way, "Sure, why not? I meant to leave tomorrow, but I can spare a few hours."

Gaius slanted him an inscrutable look. "Are you going back to the Creek when you leave here, or are you moving on?" Merlin crossed his outstretched legs, didn't answer. Gaius added, "Now that the office roof and furnishings are finished, you've got nothing to hold you there."

Merlin bared his teeth in a half-smile, half-grimace. "It amuses you, old man?" he said.

"What?" The twinkle in Gaius' eye revealed that he fully understood the younger man, and knew that Merlin wasn't fooled, either. "I already know everything worth knowing about the folk in Emmett's Creek. A new person to figure out? – yes, it amuses me."

"Getting very far?" Merlin thought suddenly of the record book lying unattended in his saddlebags with Gaius alone in the room.

The old physician hummed noncommittally. "Have you found what you were looking for in Camelot, then?" he continued conversationally. And when Merlin didn't reply, Gaius went on, laying aside his papers and powders and leveling a look at him. "I wanted to have a word with you. No one denies that Padlow deserves what he's got coming. He has plenty of enemies, and it stands to reason some of them would like to act on their hatred. And you haven't hidden the fact that you're one of them. But… I wouldn't be doing my job as your physician, or following my conscience, if I didn't try to change your mind. I know Uther's policy for the punishment of a crime is an eye for an eye, but giving back how you've been paid makes everyone a loser, then."

Merlin let one eyebrow rise in skepticism, and Gaius took it as an invitation to explain himself.

"I've been thinking a lot on forgiveness," the old man continued. At the low growl in Merlin's throat that he hadn't been quick enough to swallow, Gaius put up one hand. "Now, I don't mean to let him – anyone – off the punishment they deserve for wrong-doing. I just mean… justice. Rather than revenge. Do you see the difference?"

Merlin found his hands were clenched into fists, and he swung himself up to a sitting position on the cot. "You have no idea." Every word was distinct, forced past the raw patch in his throat. "You have no idea." He tried to say more, to shove Gaius' understanding a little closer to the depths of the hellish agony he carried inside, but words failed. "Sometimes justice isn't enough," he tried again. "Sometimes…"

He turned his mind away from the memory of his mother's outstretched fingers lying inches from his sisters' soft brown curls on the blood-soaked wood of the kitchen floor, the horror etched on his father's frozen face, the littlest coffin – Merlin thought instead of the jobs he'd been assigned while working for Morgana.

"Sometimes justice is not enough." He needed something more – an end. Some proof of Padlow's suffering to show the specters of his family. Even if it cost his life and soul, too.

Gaius raised one of his eyebrows. "What if your revenge isn't enough?" he said, with a stern sort of compassion. "What if, in the end, you're still not satisfied? What if you pay him back only to find it's not what you're looking for, after all? And you get no lasting peace?"

Merlin didn't allow the troubled feeling that crept up on him to show. With the memories of past jobs, other memories surfaced – the father of a murdered child losing his temper upon learning that the laws governing personal vengeance didn't allow for extended torture – the woman who'd insisted upon being present to watch the punishment of the street thief who'd left her with a long red knife scar down her face and had turned away in tears – the boy who'd paid to the last coin for revenge upon his sister's rapist and had returned home to a family now penniless as well as wounded and irreversibly broken.

Killing Padlow wouldn't bring his family back. This he knew. But he was counting on the killing of the murderer to alleviate the gnawing ache of tragic loss and guilt – that he hadn't protected his family, hadn't at least been present to share their fate.

What if he wasn't satisfied? What if the dreams didn't stop? He'd go mad, or kill himself, eventually.

He could spend the rest of his life as a revenger, righting wrongs – of those who could afford to be avenged. What of the others? What of himself?

"What do you want?" Gaius said softly.

Merlin lifted his eyes to the physician's face, for the first time letting all his hate and rage boil over inside, and Gaius sat back abruptly in his chair without being aware that he'd moved. "I want him to pay," he said in a low hard voice. "I want him to match the suffering he's caused. I want him to feel what he's made others feel, to know loss and pain and hopelessness, to be -"

"To be sorry?" Gaius filled in. There was a pause. "And what if he isn't?"

Remorse. Regret. Was that truly what Merlin was after? For Padlow to beg for forgiveness, to apologize again and again, to wish with all his being that he could go back and change the past – and then to die rejected. That would be far more satisfying that to fight an unrepentant and jeering Padlow to a finish.

Then, would his death be enough?

"And what would your mother want?" Gaius continued. "Surely not for her son to be –"

Merlin clutched the last of his self-control. "Not another word," he said. And for once, the physician fell silent. Merlin rolled over on the cot with his face to the wall, and considered himself justified in counting his debt to Gaius paid.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

The library was quiet, and permeated with the smell of leather and glue and old dust, the walls lined with shelves, and tables piled high with huge tomes, alcoves half-hidden by more free-standing shelves.

"Let me know if you decide to leave?" Gaius said, too excited by the prospects of his visit to pay much attention to Merlin, and hurried off to a far corner of the library without waiting for an answer.

Merlin wandered for the better part of an hour, his saddlebags slung over his shoulder, hat in hand. In skimming the titles of the books printed on their spines, he gradually developed a feel for the shelving system, and soon found his way to the legal section, of which tax law and records was only a small subsection. The tax records, he noted, only dated to the beginning of Uther's reign. The older records had probably been archived, or destroyed, as Uther chose.

The records he was looking for were filed by shire and town, not by collector, so Merlin grabbed a stack of recent tax records for Emmett's Creek, and picked through a stack for Ealdor, to find the records from the year his family had been massacred. These were the records written by Uther's agents, not by the tax farmer himself, so it was impossible to match it swiftly to Padlow's own record book in the saddlebags.

For as busy and as noisy as the courtyard had been, the tax records corner was very quiet. Merlin sat down at a table and immersed himself in the pages. He'd scrounged a few scraps of paper to make notations on, and an inkwell and pen sat ready on every table.

The more he read, the more his anger grew.

Merlin started by averaging the reported profits of the twenty largest farms and ranches of both Ealdor and Emmett's Creek, which weren't very dissimilar. Then he calculated the tax based on Uther's basic tax laws and added a reasonable percentage for the tax farmer's allowed profit, and compared it to the records listed in Padlow's book.

Padlow's profits, after paying Uther, were roughly equivalent to the calculated value of five farms and two ranches in each shire. He was easily the wealthiest individual through the whole shire, based solely on the profits garnered from Emmett's Creek folk.

Merlin was seized by the desire to know how other tax farmers were faring, and shoved his chair back from the table to stand. He'd chosen a chair with its back to the wall, sideways to the alcove's entrance, but had become so engrossed in the records books that the other's presence had gone completely unnoticed.

What stopped Merlin cold in his seat was not so much the unexpected arrival of another reader, or the fact that the intruder was watching him instead of perusing the shelves. It was the menacing look of complete recognition and deep animosity in the blue eyes of a man who looked both fit and mature enough to command several hundred of Uther's troops.

Merlin froze for a moment, trying to decide on an appropriate reaction – fight, flight, or bluff.

Then his own recognition kicked in. This man he knew.

This man he had first seen approaching on horseback as he struggled to guide the plow in his father's furrows. This man had calmly subdued his raging refusal to leave, binding him bodily over the back of his own plowhorse. This man Merlin had stabbed with his unnoticed boot knife when caught trying to cut his bonds and escape in the night.

This man he thought he'd killed. Relief, then terror. And who knew very well who he was.

"I misjudged you," the blonde agent said.

He made no move, but Merlin saw he was ready for anything his quarry might try. It was an unpleasant feeling, being the prey again.

"I couldn't believe it when I saw you in Uther's courtyard," the man continued, not taking his eyes from Merlin's. "I never thought you'd have the gall to show your face in Camelot. At least not before you'd come of age."

They measured each other for a moment – Merlin knew he'd put on pounds and inches both in two years, as well as gathering experience. Thank Morgana for that.

"I could still take you into Uther's service, where you belong," the man continued.

"You'd find it harder than last time," Merlin said.

"Or I could kill you now, here, for your crimes. I'm still one of Uther's agents."

Merlin eased up from his chair and took a step back. The man straightened and tensed, but kept his hands folded together over his belt buckle, so Merlin kept his hands carefully in view as well.

"What does it get you?" the agent said, referring to his obvious readiness to fight. "Death, prison, or on the run again."

On the run, he'd still eventually track Padlow down and kill him. Death, before he'd gotten his revenge, was out of the question. And prison, knowing the murderer was alive and terrorizing freely, would drive him mad.

"Are you arresting me?" Merlin asked. "I'll not go." The blade of his boot knife this time was longer and sharper. And the table was still between them – circling, the agent wouldn't be able to lay a hand on Merlin without leaving the exit unguarded. Unless he had reinforcements.

"I figure I deserve this scar," the man said, raising his left hand to sketch a short line across his vest over his ribs with his forefinger. "I should have checked you for weapons, child though you were."

Merlin bared his teeth in a silent snarl. "Say that word again," he said, and it was a warning and a dare.

"I hated you for that, and for the long chase you led me," the blonde man said. "But you never even knew I was on your trail, did you?"

It was true. Merlin had expected retribution for killing an agent someday, but he hadn't expected the man he thought he'd killed to be following. Well. Then Padlow would be his first kill – more appropriate.

"Thanks for not dying," he said. "Considerate of you."

"I lost you after you left Morgana's organization," the man informed him conversationally. "Lovely lady, that. Most persuasive."

Merlin grinned suddenly. Morgana's favorite form of persuasion was usually an edge of steel.

"But after all that, and two years, I figure you owe me at least thirty stripes and a year in prison." Seeing Merlin's answer on his face, the agent's expression hardened. "We could still conscript you into training for Uther's service, if you prefer that option."

"I wouldn't go then, I won't go now," Merlin said shortly. "My business is elsewhere." He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. The agent stepped forward, eyes glancing down to the records Merlin had left open on the table.

"Business in Emmett's Creek?" he said. "Why would a revenger like you be interested in –" his blue eyes shifted to the second set of records, that of Merlin's hometown of Ealdor. Merlin closed his eyes for a moment, thinking that it would be a matter of seconds only… "You think it was the tax farmer who killed your family, and you're going after him," the agent guessed flatly. "A little private revenge. Not very lucrative, is it. And now it's cost you your freedom."

The agent lifted his right hand, and Merlin saw he held a whistle – meant to call other agents for aid. He'd be outnumbered; he'd fight and be beaten to death, or be captured and take the thirty lashes and one year in prison. One year in which Padlow could move on, disappear. One year to lose his quarry, his satisfaction – to lose his sanity to the nightmares that would visit his cell relentlessly.

Would his pride let him stoop to begging for time? He didn't see any way out, by fighting. He certainly couldn't climb one of the library's confining shelves to escape.

"Well, what have we here?" said Gaius' stern-cheerful voice. The old physician moved into the alcove, a fold of journals under his arm. His keen eyes took in both men, the expressions on their faces and the tension in their bodies. His tone didn't change. "Gentlemen, please, if you must fight, could you take it outside the library?"

"Stay out of it, Gaius," Merlin said rudely. And could have bitten his tongue in two at his careless mistake. Guarding his tongue had never been a problem for him; what was wrong with him that he slipped like that?

The agent looked at Merlin, looked at Gaius. "You know him?" he said, and the question was directed to both.

Merlin chose not to answer, but Gaius did it for him. "Yes. He was my patient, a couple of months ago."

"Patient?" the agent said, looking Merlin over to assess possible weaknesses. "Where are you from?"

"Emmett's Creek," Gaius said. "Merlin's first night there, he managed to start a fight with our reeve."

"Yeah, that sounds like him," the agent said, a note of bitter humor creeping into his voice for the first time.

And it was Gaius' turn to ask, "You know him?" gesturing to Merlin in surprise.

The agent smiled. Merlin's heart dropped to his boots.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Freedom was preferable to prison. At any cost? Merlin decided yes. But this time, the cost was high, and Merlin's pride was paying it in coin money.

Between the agent, whose name was Arthur, and Gaius, they'd effectively tied Merlin's hands. Figuratively, that is – he'd never willingly allow Arthur to lay a finger on him again. He'd be true to his word, though given under duress and grudgingly, but Arthur was keeping an eagle eye on him, just the same, as though he expected Merlin to give the old nag a kick in the ribs and disappear into the underbrush.

Twice now, Merlin had noticed, his turning over in his bedroll had caused the agent to bolt upright – keeping watch on him at night, too.

The whistle had never been blown. The canny physician had persuaded the two antagonists to be seated at the table to work out a peaceable solution – and had profited greatly himself by the information he learned about Merlin and Padlow both.

In the end, Arthur had agreed to stay Merlin's deserved punishment til he learned more of the tax situation in that region, and another agent had been sent to Ealdor to see what could be learned there. Merlin in turn had agreed to abide by Arthur's judgment after his goal of revenge had been reached. There were loopholes, of course, that both were aware of, but the agreement, however tentative it was, had been made.

So it was that Merlin found himself riding his old nag between the physician's gangly filly and Arthur's sturdy gelding, while the other two traded stories around him. Mostly he tried to ride out of earshot, but Arthur didn't trust him far, and Gaius stuck close to Arthur.

"Padlow, he's a bad one," Gaius was musing one afternoon as they neared their destination. "No doubt about it. He's got our Reeve Whatley in his pocket, and his partner is an unscrupulous trapper called Burton. Between the three of them, they've got the town tied up tight. It's a pretty fair guess he's working the other towns he's responsible for the same way."

Yes, it was, and the proof rested snugly in his saddlebags – well, in Arthur's saddlebags, now. Proof, written right there in the murderer's handwriting.

"No one has reported him?" Arthur asked.

"Any whisper of it brings Burton and Padlow calling – and not on a polite social visit, either. Livestock poisoned and butchered, crops and houses burned –"

"Your office?" Merlin suggested quietly. "Your arm? Is that why no one would help you rebuild?" Gaius grimaced, and didn't answer. Merlin could feel Arthur's gaze rest on him momentarily, and knew the agent was thinking of the work he'd done, the damage mended almost entirely by the arsonist's enemy. Merlin didn't allow his expression to change, but he too found that ironic.

"But surely Padlow is gone most of the year, and Burton has his own business to tend to?" Arthur asked, after a moment.

"Not so much as you'd think," Gaius answered. "He's like a fox or a wolf, you see him move from the corner of your eye, but gone by the time you turn your head. Sneaky, that one is. And Reeve Whatley knows just about everything going on in town. Most folks don't want to believe that he's taking from Padlow, and pretend his visits and questions are honest reeve-work."

"He turns a blind eye – is that all he does?" Arthur's tone was thoughtful, quiet, not really directed to Gaius for an answer.

"Not only that, he turns the blame on the victim for making trouble. Couple of the boys got together to try to hire Merlin here to take him on, but he wouldn't even hear them out."

Merlin's quick sideways glance met an ironic twinkle from the physician's eyes. Arthur chuckled; Merlin didn't respond. If an opportunity had been wasted because he hadn't cared to talk to Cedric, he had none to blame but himself.

In hindsight, it wasn't the longest five days of Merlin's life, but it was close. By the time they finally approached the outlying farms around Emmett's Creek, he figured the other two had compared each note they had on him. Some even twice.

Gaius headed for his own home – a small house that he shared with Alice on a lane somewhat removed from the main street – and Merlin silently agreed to lead Arthur to a place where he could get a meal and a room. If the town had been large enough to support two taverns, for sure Merlin would have taken Arthur to the other one. As it was, Percy's Place would have to be big enough for the two of them, at least for a while.

He could feel trouble in the air, though, like a midsummer thunderstorm, a heavy restless feeling. Two things bothered him as they rode down the street, the interest of every curious passerby. First, the look on Freya's face as they rode past Gaius' office, where she stood conversing with Alice, basket on her elbow, as the older woman locked the door behind her for the day. And second, the look on Burton's face as the trapper caught first the girl's expression, then followed her gaze back up to the two men riding past the jail where he stood with Whatley.

Arthur noticed, too. "Gaius never said you had a woman," he remarked. His tone was casual, but a rising inflection turned it into a question.

Merlin looked at him. "That's Padlow's woman," he said, keeping his own tone neutral.

Arthur's eyebrows – a few shades darker than his blonde hair – drew together, one up and one down, to display surprised or displeasure, or both. Freya's expression had surely been close to that of a woman welcoming her man home after some days' absence, and the pity of it was she probably didn't know it, herself. Merlin expected the agent to question him further, but Arthur said only, "And on the right?"

"Reeve Whatley in the red shirt. And Burton in deerhide." Neither man gave the pair in front of the jail another look. The horses' hooves and the noise of other traffic on the street would cover their conversation, but a second glance would give away the subject.

"The partner? Whose ear you pierced with the dart?"

"You heard that one," Merlin said, not really a question. He felt a wolfish grin stretch his lips.

"Your Gaius is a talkative man," Arthur observed with some humor. "You, on the other hand… I have to figure you out from what you do, not what you say. Or don't say."

The uneasy truce between them had deepened almost imperceptibly into grudging respect on both sides during their trip. They'd even trained a little together, something Merlin hoped would continue. He was a little rusty from being on his own, and he needed to be in peak condition to face Padlow. Merlin was even starting to feel that Arthur was closer to understanding him than any in Emmett's Creek. And so found himself in conversation with the agent more often than he was used to.

"What do you figure?" he asked. The sign was missing from the livery stable, the wooden plank unhooked, but no one really needed the sign to know the establishment for what it was. They reined in, and Elyan's young son came out to take their horses.

"I figure you've got more than one decent bone in your body," Arthur said. "I figure you for more passion than you let show. I figure you have a conscience, though you wouldn't admit it. I figure you for an honest man, which is rare."

Merlin didn't respond, didn't allow himself any reaction. As his father's son, he would have been more than pleased to be characterized so. As a revenger… were these observations complementary?

"Shasta will have stew for dinner," he said only. He nodded across to the tavern as Arthur turned from gathering his saddlebags.

"I figure Burton will want to have it out with you before too long, by the look of him," Arthur continued, staying in the stable as Merlin strode across the street. In the plate-glass of Percy's front window, he could see the agent turn to speak to Elyan's son, giving instructions on the care and boarding of his gelding.

Merlin figured on Burton's antagonism showing again, too. Like most bullies, Burton was a coward when it came to someone who'd stand up to him, and that was the biggest reason he hadn't come after Merlin since that day with the axe. But if looks could kill, the glare Burton had given him coming down Main Street would have been the death of Merlin.

He figured Burton would want to have it out with Freya, too – it was her expression of happiness and relief focused on him that had drawn the trapper's attention.

Did he care? She had made a very poor choice in a husband – a murderer who didn't protect her from his own partner. But did she deserve abuse and punishment as consequences of her choice?

His own empty saddlebags over his shoulder, he entered the tavern. The few customers at the table were tended by Gwen, who flirted with them casually, her back to Merlin. Percy and Shasta were nowhere in sight – back in the kitchen, Merlin guessed, as he took the stairs two at a time. The tavern's rooms were never filled, so Shasta kept his room open for him, though he slept most nights in his treetop platform. But after five days traveling in the company of talkative Gaius and wily Arthur, Merlin wanted to be alone, wanted to lie in more comfort than the uneven branches afforded, wanted to rest. And to think.

He lay on his cot, booted feet crossed at the ankle, hands behind his head, staring at the rafters, but didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. The dreams would come, he knew. In spite of the physical weariness of their last day of travel. And when a pattering of rain sounded on the roof – random at first, then increasingly steadier – he knew there would be no work to block them out that night, either.

But he could plan.

In the course of his training with Morgana, they had followed a quarry once to an illegal duel, and one of their regular informants had passed information more than once at a public boxing match. A duel was usually scheduled days, even weeks in advance, to allow the two duelists to examine the field, to guide their training and practice in the chosen weapon. A boxing match, however, forbade the contestants entering the square til moments before the match, and was often the result of last-minute pairing and appointment.

It was all about advantage. The duelists were given an equal chance to learn and study the chosen ground; the boxers were prevented from the same, also for reasons of equality. A fair fight.

This fight would be on Padlow's home ground. Like a duelist, Merlin was taking the chance to learn the area, the woods and streams and fields where he might possibly meet his enemy, because like a boxer, he might not have the chance to study and learn his opponent before they met. Too many people already knew, or had guessed at, his purpose in Emmett's Creek – the town was just too small to hide anything for long. And Padlow would be made aware of him before too long, once he arrived. An advantage for Merlin lay in seeking his revenge immediately upon Padlow's return, perhaps even choosing the site himself, if he could so manipulate the murderer.

Like a duelist, Merlin could practice with the weapons at hand, and like a boxer, he could build his endurance, the better to survive.

Merlin's mind ran over the several plans that had been forming, to cover every circumstance he could foresee – a different strategy for the many places he could meet the murderer, for the possibility that Burton or Reeve Whatley would join in, the reactions of various others that might be present. For the weather, the time of day.

Now he had to factor Agent Arthur into his plans.

And he still hadn't decided what to do about Freya.

The thought of Freya – her slender form turning as he rode past, the casual brush of her short black hair over her shoulder, the expression in her warm brown eyes that he'd never seen in a woman's eyes looking at him, the way Morgana sometimes looked at Gwaine – disrupted all other thoughts.

He rolled off his cot and left his saddlebags beneath it, descending the stairs to the common room.

More than one curious glance was directed toward the newcomer during Shasta's call for soup, during the drinking games and darts and music and dancing that evening. Merlin sat in his place alone in the corner; they'd all become so accustomed to his silent present that he expected no attention aside from Freya or Gwen bringing his dinner and drink – it was Gwen tonight, but she murmured her "_You're welcome_" response to his thanks absently, her eyes on the blonde-haired agent.

A few of the ranch hands and one farmer's son involved Arthur in a game of cards, and before Merlin could wonder what he would say of himself to them, Reeve Whatley in his red shirt pushed open the tavern door, brushing raindrops from his shoulders and tipping a tiny stream of water from the brim of his hat, tapping the walking stick against the toe of one boot.

Over the rim of his mug, Merlin watched the reeve take in the card game with the stranger, then search the room – he dropped his gaze a moment before Whatley could make eye contact. He deliberately ignored the other's scrutiny, and under the pretence of giving a bored glance at the next dart throw, saw the reeve insert himself belligerently into the card game.

Several pairs of dancers had taken to the small space cleared of tables, began stamping and whirling energetically to the music provided by a skinny young fiddler. Even through the moving obstacles between his table and that of the card players, it was obvious that the reeve lost no time in embarking on an interrogation of Arthur concerning his relationship with Merlin – not unexpected, since Whatley had seen them ride into Emmett's Creek together.

Arthur was dealing, and answered cheerfully enough, without raising his eyes from the deck. Merlin caught the phrase "_met on the road_." So he and Arthur were to be passed off as strangers with no interest in each other. Good. He could play that hand. But whether Reeve Whatley – and all of Emmett's Creek, for that matter – bought their bluff, remained to be seen.

He concentrated on the crowd, seeing many familiar faces in the tavern. The one person conspicuous by his absence was Burton.

Merlin figured Burton was still bent on revenge for his damaged ear. He wasn't a planner, that one, but he was smart enough to take an opportunity. Merlin was smart enough to take care that none should arise; his quarrel was not with Burton, this time. He could learn what he needed to of Padlow's partner without having a conversation – or another fight – with the trapper. He wasn't afraid of Burton, he just didn't want to give Reeve Whatley an excuse to jail him again. He'd risked that already, fighting with the cowhand, and with Cedric.

Burton's presence kept Emmett's Creek in line while Padlow was gone on his tax circuit, even though the trapper's own trips took days and sometimes weeks at a time. Evidently he had no qualms about using violence to keep the people intimidated enough to obey Padlow with little more than a brief dissatisfied murmur, an occasional attempt at hiring a passing stranger who looked willing to fight for pay. While Reeve Whatley covered it all with the pretense of legality.

He wondered if Burton was also guarding Padlow's stash, the sums he forced from the people in addition to the taxes he handed to Uther's agents in Camelot. There was no hint of luxury in that hovel Padlow shared with his wife, but was Burton more trustworthy than Freya? Maybe to a man like Padlow.

Or maybe no one else knew where the profits were hidden. Surely he hadn't banked them – banks kept records that Padlow couldn't explain away, were any with enough authority to ask.

But tonight, when all of Emmett's Creek was curious about the new arrival, and even a tenuous connection with Merlin would make Burton suspicious of Arthur and his business in town, Burton hadn't shown his face at the tavern. It made Merlin nervous, as if he were sitting with his back to the window. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Freya came to retrieve his empty bowl, and lingered. "Did you have a good trip?" she asked shyly, in a low voice, not meeting his eyes. She didn't want to draw attention to their conversation; he grunted noncommittally.

He wondered if she'd noticed Burton across the street at the jail, earlier. He wondered if she had made the connection between their conversation in the rain on his platform, and his trip to Camelot. He wondered what she would do with that information, if she had.

"And Gaius? He came back with you?"

So she had known that Gaius had intended to accompany him. "Yes," he said shortly.

Her eyes flicked briefly over his face. "I'm glad your trip… went well. Alice – was glad to see you back."

When he didn't answer, she moved away again, and he was glad for that. There was a strange warmth in his middle that had nothing to do with soup or beer. Something that might confuse him if he thought about it further. Confuse, and distract.

He pushed the table away from him, standing with an explosive movement, then headed straight for the bar without stopping for the dancers, brushing Gwen and a full tray of drinks out of his way, banging his hip on the back of a chair that some round farmer scraped back at the wrong moment.

Percy saw him coming, and reached a new mug under the tap of the keg on the bar.


	6. Evidence

**Chapter 6: Evidence**

Merlin sat at the corner of the bar, his back to the wall, as he'd sat his first night in Emmett's Creek.

One part of his mind, the part that always stayed active and processed sensory information automatically, the part that raised hairs on the back of his neck and sent his hand springing to his belt for his knife before he had time to think consciously, stayed open to the talk at the card table behind him to his right. It stayed open to the dancers, to the fiddle player, to Gwen with her tray weaving in and out.

But he thought. Sometimes very hard, about things Gaius had said, and Arthur, and… Freya. Sometimes he tried not to think at all, just stared across the noisy room and swallowed his beer – and a second, and a third – folded in on himself and his familiar misery. The sorrow. The grief he'd never given in to, the shock he'd never quite overcome.

Deliberately he let the face of his father come before his mind's eye. Revenge was something Merlin wanted, desperately, needed. And Balinor? Would he approve, be proud of the man his son had become? No – but would he accept that this was the way Merlin had to be?

His mother had done her best, raising him; he recognized her efforts to overcome her grief at losing the two daughters between Merlin and the two babies, to strive for cheerfulness for the sake of her husband and son. How would she look at him now? Would she even recognize him? Would she understand? Every time he caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window, the hard defiance, the deep angry eyes, unshaven face, travel-worn clothes and scuffed boots, he knew that one look at him now would have his mother telling his sisters to run and hide.

He didn't think of his baby sisters – he'd seen fear often enough in the eyes of Emmett's Creek youngsters to know how his sisters would react.

While his gaze was turned inward, he remained aware that the tavern had slowly been emptying as the hours passed. Arthur stood, stretched, and stepped away from the card table, leaving his saddlebags slung over the back of his vacated chair, to lounge on a bar stool and nurse another drink, several places down from Merlin and without a glance for him.

Reeve Whatley left soon after, still shooting suspicious glances at both of them, and Shasta collected the last empty soup bowl and disappeared to wash them. Gwen remained, chatting with the fiddler, but casting frequent looks at the blonde agent sitting at the bar. Soon it was just the four of them and Percy in the common room as the last ranch hand helped his more tipsy friend out the door. Arthur slid another stool closer to Merlin, where they could hear each other without speaking too loudly, but still leave doubt in an onlooker's mind as to the extent of their familiarity.

"Gaius said Percy could be trusted, so I've told him why I'm here," Arthur told him, keeping his voice low. "Your reeve was asking questions, but I said only that I'm looking for a job, and fell in with you on the road."

Merlin nodded, but his attention had turned sideways to the saddlebags over the chair. The closing flap was turned back, and the weight of Padlow's record journal caused that side to gape open slightly. Merlin frowned; it wasn't like an agent to be careless with evidence, and this was the best they had.

"You'll want to keep that hidden," he said, and Arthur turned to see what he was referring to, "considering the trouble I had acquiring it."

Arthur snorted. He knew perfectly well that Merlin had essentially stolen it, but he bent over the table to adjust the saddlebags, muttering under his breath, "Thought I had that shut…"

Percy flipped a dish cloth off his shoulder and came toward them, wiping the bartop as he came. Freya came out of the kitchen behind him, looking tired but content, not paying much attention to Arthur and Merlin at the bar with Percy between them; Gwen caught her eye and laughingly drew her over to the dance floor and the fiddle player, with another glance toward the agent.

"Who should I see first, do you think?" Arthur asked Percy, meeting Gwen's eyes briefly before focusing on the big bartender.

The cloth in Percy's hand rubbed a slow repetitive circle as he considered. "Start with Leon," he said. "He owns the biggest ranch around – seven leagues or so northeast. He's always complaining about Padlow, and he's got sixteen hands who'll tell you all about their tax troubles, too."

On the dance floor, Gwen had persuaded Freya to dance a few steps, and the slender girl had caught something of her friend's exuberance. Both girls whirled through the steps of a complicated air; Freya's light steps gave her an appearance of floating in spite of the shoes Merlin knew to be too big for her. Her arms lifted into the air to weave in time to the rhythm – she was a very good dancer, Merlin was surprised to note.

The fiddler shuffled a few steps, laughing as he quickened the tune. Percy was giving Arthur more detailed directions to Leon's ranch, drawing an invisible map on the bar with one big forefinger. And, because Gwen abandoned her efforts to keep up and fell back to the fiddler's side to clap her hands in time to the tune, Arthur was paying attention to the bartender.

The music swirled gaily, the extra beer Merlin was unused to drinking warmed in his blood. Freya danced faster and faster, turning and spinning, her body swaying, her hands dipping like birds, her feet a light blur in their oversize shoes. The fiddler ended the song with a flourish and Freya sank into a curtsy, laughing, smiling, flushed with uncharacteristic happiness, while Gwen applauded her.

So happened the song had ended with Freya more than half-facing the bar. So happened she looked directly into his eyes while still laughing, smiling, flushed – happy.

His breath caught.

She was so beautiful.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Life was dull for Freya, even at the best of times. Staying at the tavern, helping the friends who took her in every time she needed it, who protected her and respected her and treated her with the gentleness and caring otherwise so lacking in her life, made existence worthwhile. Her talks with Gaius and Alice were an encouragement, but there was too much dislike and disapproval in Emmett's Creek for her to feel much joy.

"Let me finish these up," Shasta told her, plunging her arms elbow-deep into Freya's soapsuds, and bumping her out of the way with one broad hip. "You go out and rest a while. Relax a little, you look like you need it."

"If you're sure," Freya said. It would be nice to sit for a moment and listen to the music. She knew it was late enough that the common room would be mostly empty.

"Go on," Shasta ordered, flicking dishwater at her, and Freya smiled as she obeyed.

The common room was almost empty; Merlin and Percy stood on either side of the bar, talking quietly with the stranger who'd ridden into Emmett's Creek earlier with Merlin – a man with blonde hair and blue eyes that had given her such a searching look – but her attention was captured by Gwen, who dragged her out to the area cleared for dancing.

"Play us a tune," Gwen ordered the fiddle player. "Something lively."

Freya noticed her friend's brown eyes were focused over her shoulder on the blonde stranger at the bar, in conversation with Percy, and smiled to herself, shrugging. It didn't really matter if Gwen had ulterior motives, did it? Her playfulness was infectious, and Freya hardly ever had the chance at unreserved fun.

Her feet sped up of their own accord, and she forgot her shyness. She forgot her tired muscles, forgot the floor still needed sweeping, forgot the other men in the room. She forgot her drab, oversize clothes and the angry, distasteful look of the townspeople, the fact that Burton was back in the Creek, and Gaius' repeated warning concerning Merlin and his intentions.

There was freedom in the music, and she abandoned herself to the rare treat wholeheartedly.

Gwen dropped out after a few bars, but kept time with her hands, laughing with Freya as she accepted the challenge of the increased tempo, dancing til she was giddy, and breathless as the fiddle vibrated on the last trill. She grinned at Gwen's laughter and turned her head only slightly, her eyes crossing the distance between them instinctively.

Merlin smiled.

It began with one side of his mouth, pulled sideways in a twitch of answering merriment, then spread spontaneously across his face, flooding his deep blue eyes with warmth. She'd never seen Merlin smile. In the few months since he'd come to Emmett's Creek, she didn't think anyone had seen him smile.

_He's beautiful_, she thought disjointedly. And young, younger than he looked with that perpetually fierce glare.

She'd never know what expression came on her face, what reaction to his smile she'd betrayed, but his features suddenly froze as if in shock, and he turned his head – deliberately, as though it were an effort, the muscles of his neck unnaturally stiff.

Without a word to his companions, or another look in her direction, he stalked to the door and out into the night.

Aware again that Gwen was offering the fiddle player leftover biscuits and cheese as payment for remaining later than the rest of the customers, leading him into the kitchen, Freya sent a quick glance at Percy and the blonde stranger, still in deep conversation over the bar. Neither seemed to take much notice that Merlin had gone.

Sighing, Freya went for the broom.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

What was he thinking? What was he playing at, losing control like that? Lowering his guard. Merlin cursed himself silently.

He should spend the night alone, in his treetop shelter. Far from everyone. Reminding himself why he was here.

_The rain will clear my head_, he thought, as he stepped out from under the boardwalk's overhang.

Three raindrops had pattered into his hair when something heavy and hard slammed into the back of his head, knocking him sprawling dizzily into the dark mud of the street. He twisted to face his attacker but slowly – whose body blocked the light from the tavern's front window for a swift instant before Merlin took a boot to the side of his face and lost consciousness.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

The rain did clear his mind. Also it woke him and set his head and right shoulder throbbing so brightly he had to blink rapidly several times before realizing that he was still somewhere in the dark and there was nothing he could see.

Still outdoors as well – the rain was dripping down his collar, soaking him through. Merlin shook his head with difficulty and sodden strands of hair clung to his cheek and forehead.

But the motion had set his body swaying inexplicably; the tense muscles in his back and shoulders tightened painfully in response. He tried to draw his hands toward him, to wipe his face, to ease the agonizing tension, but couldn't.

And then his sense of equilibrium reasserted itself, and he found he was suspended in midair by a strong cord tied around and burning into his wrists.

"Ah, you're awake, huh?" rasped an unfamiliar voice, so close that Merlin jerked in reaction, then wished he hadn't as his shoulders shouted a silent protest. The man misunderstood the movement. "You won't get down as easy as that," he growled. "Me and you have got a score to settle."

Without warning, a blow came to Merlin's right side, a blow that might've cracked one of his lower ribs; his body lunged against the rope at his wrists.

Burton, Merlin knew then, and counted himself lucky that it wasn't the axe the man had hit him with from behind, this time. And he wouldn't free Merlin for the pleading, wouldn't free him while he still had strength to fight back. Might not free him while he still breathed… He'd waited til Merlin's guard was down – Merlin cursed the fiddler, Gwen, and Freya all roundly in his head, cursed himself lastly because it was his fault – then tied him up like a chicken in a butcher's window, where he could strike at him at leisure, probably in some location where he wouldn't expect to be disturbed. Which could be just about anywhere, this time of night during a rainstorm.

Merlin focused on survival, then, for the present. Escape would come later, when Burton had taken his fun and was tiring. To fight back, as every instinct strained to do, would be pointless; he'd keep silent, conserve his energy – and grunted with another quick blow to his ribs.

"You think you're smart, don't you?" Burton snarled from the darkness in front of Merlin. "You and your partner. You've got Padlow's journal – what are you gonna do with it?"

Merlin was slightly surprised at that, but decided it was more likely the reeve had seen the pages in Arthur's possession, and had given orders or at least permission for this night's activities, than Burton had the intelligence to discover that on his own. But that meant Burton wasn't just after revenge for his ear. Merlin's eyes began to adjust to the not-quite-absolute blackness.

"Answer me!" Burton said, and cursed Merlin vilely, jabbing his weapon – club, maybe, a length of board or log comfortable to a man's grip – into the pit of Merlin's stomach. His body tried to curl up reactively, yanking at his wrists again. "You're trying to get into our setup, is that it? Or were you just after the money?"

Hurting as he was, Merlin still recognized the opportunity. Burton – and therefore Reeve Whatley – had jumped to the wrong conclusion. They had guessed that Merlin and Arthur were outlaws and thieves. Merlin could use that, he was sure, if he could just persuade his mind to think clearly.

"She told you, didn't she?" Burton went on, taking a swing at Merlin's knee – that fortunately landed on his thigh. He was immediately grateful that the darkness of the night and Burton's disinclination for illumination prevented him from more accurate blows. "She's gone and double-crossed us – but you can be sure she won't get away with it, either!"

She – Freya?

"What are you talking about?" Merlin said, speaking with difficulty – one side of his face felt swollen.

"I'll do the asking!" Burton raged, slamming the end of the club into Merlin's left side – a glancing blow, swinging him around.

A lighted rectangle caught his attention, only a few yards away – a window. If he shouted – they'd never hear him over the rain beating on the roof. And Merlin didn't fancy shouting for help and being rescued, either.

"You answer me!" Another blow. "Did she sleep with you, too? Give you what she's been denying me for years?"

Merlin drew a hot, painful breath – but he'd had worse beatings, and survived. Come to think of it, he'd had worse training sessions with Gwaine, and gone back for more the next day. "What are you talking about?" he spat again.

"Freya!" The next swing landed across the small of his back, and as he arched his arms burned at wrists and shoulders. "She showed you where to find that journal, didn't she? Told you about the money? Did she tell you that no one knows where it's at, except Padlow? She'll get what's coming to her, too." Burton's evil chuckle sounded in Merlin's ear, and the trapper began to describe what he had in mind for the girl's fate.

Freya hadn't known she was betraying her husband in that treetop conversation, and even if she had, no woman deserved the pain and degradation Burton described with whispered glee.

"You've lost your mind," Merlin said loudly with what breath he could gasp in. "Never even talked to her – I didn't have to, did I? Padlow left that book right out in the open for anyone to see."

Belatedly he thought, _Should've led with denial_. The club connected heavily with his midsection again, and again – he grunted in pain but kept on.

"She's got nothing to do with it – we wouldn't share with her anyway –" a blow, another grunt, and Merlin panted, "And as for sleeping with her, I'd rather spend my coin on a real woman, and get a good time while I'm paying!"

Two thuds in quick succession, on either side of Merlin's already battered ribcage, and his body swung from his wrists like a weighted pendulum. But he was determined to turn Burton's attention and exhaust his sense of vengeance.

"You're both idiots, you and Padlow!" he shouted hoarsely toward Burton's shadow against the dimly lit window – of the tavern? "Stupid and clumsy – you're just waiting for someone to come along and rob you blind!" Playing on Burton's mistaken suspicions, Merlin taunted him as long as he could manage, between the curses and the blows that continued to pound his body.

He sensed Burton's frustration was near the breaking point. Merlin spat out a mouthful of blood, but feebly, and swallowed hard. Burton hadn't yet demanded the return of the journal, and Merlin could only hope the less-than-intelligent trapper would forget about it, or at least neglect to claim it in ransom for Merlin's life. However, the night could end with a knife in Merlin's ribs, otherwise, and he couldn't have that, not when his quarry was so close and there was even a chance that he could kill him legally.

Merlin hoped he'd at least spared Freya from Burton's spite.

Burton hit him twice more with the club, rough wooden blows that made little difference through the steady throb of pain throughout Merlin's body. He was panting himself, and the rage was abating in his voice as he taunted, "Had enough yet, you sonuva –" and went off on a string of foul names.

Merlin's whole body was alight with agony, but Burton was definitely tiring, and he decided in sheer stubbornness that he was tough enough to withstand a second such beating. Or – recklessly – a third. He cleared his throat to be able to continue breathing, and coughed a little when he tasted blood.

"Had enough, have you?" A half-hearted thump across Merlin's left hip. "You'll think twice before raising your hand to me again, won't you?" Taking Merlin's silence for defeat, Burton added, "You leave us alone, then!"

The trapper decided a parting shot was in order, and aimed high, catching Merlin crossways on his back, and the back of his head.

It was the last thing Merlin felt for some time.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

When Merlin woke the second time, the rain was still trickling down his face, his whole body throbbed, and he couldn't feel his hands. He was disoriented enough to wonder if Burton would momentarily ask him if he was awake, and begin the beating all over again.

He listened for a moment, groggily unable to believe himself alone. But the rain, beating a gentler pattern on the roofs of the town around him, was all he heard, and he was thankful Burton had not decided to take him elsewhere as a hostage for the record book, or else kill him where he hung.

It came across Merlin's mind that he could smell wet earth, and hay, and horse manure. The livery stable across from the tavern? Likely, he decided, thinking of the post in front of the building, where the sign had been missing earlier in the day. It was close to the tavern, so Burton would not have had to drag him far, and the whole street was deserted on a late rainy night.

He turned his neck, stiff between tightly up-stretched arms, and located the rectangle of light he'd seen earlier – it was there still. Someone was still awake in the tavern, then. He wondered how much time had passed. He could shout for help, now that the rain had died down somewhat, they might hear him.

But he didn't. There was fight left in him, and pride. He wasn't entirely helpless.

He didn't need anyone.

Anticipating the pain he was going to cause himself, Merlin clenched his jaw and kicked out with one booted foot, in front of himself and behind, meeting nothing but air. His body twisted, pulling unbearably on his raw wrists, and momentarily, he wondered if it was possible for his hands to simply separate from his arms. Obstinately, he kicked again, to his right, and his ankle hit the upright post.

This time he swung both feet, and clamped his legs around the post, squeezing it like he was trying to shimmy up a tree with no branches. The effort fired a throbbing ache in the pit of his stomach, which spread swiftly to ribs and shoulders. His arms might separate from his body at the shoulders, too, he thought.

By inching his legs up the post, he managed to gain some slack in the cord binding him. Now, if he was in luck, Burton had merely dropped the rope into the open hook which would normally support the stable's sign, and had not tied it fast. Merlin threw his upper body violently toward the post, and felt the rope slide – but not quite leave the curve of the metal hook screwed into the underside of the post. A sob jolted from his chest, but he repeated the maneuver, gripping the post like a vise with his legs.

And the cord slipped free of the hook.

He tumbled down hard, half on the boardwalk in front of the stable, half in the mud of the street. He let himself lie limp for a long minute, gasping for breath like a drowning man. Once he caught his breath again, he attempted to catch a few mouthfuls of rain to wet his raw throat. All the while swearing as hard as he could, in his mind, to steel his body to obey him in spite of its trauma and the overwhelming stiff misery.

Merlin rolled to his stomach and pushed himself to his knees with his hands, still tried together. He might have been using a cane to prop himself up, for all he could feel of his fingers. He staggered to his feet and almost fell again.

The rope that had secured him in midair would be tied off to the post somewhere, and Merlin still had his knife at his belt. It was necessary to drag his left arm across his body to reach it, and he groaned involuntarily at the painful pull in his shoulder. It took two clumsy tries before he was able to drag the knife free with numb fingers, and he stumbled through the mud toward the tavern in order to pull the rope taut enough to cut.

_Rain's good_, he thought in a vague sort of way. He could imagine the picture he would make if anyone had seen him by moonlight – swaying unsteadily in the middle of the street, bound hands trying to turn the blade of the knife on the cord with enough force to cut it through.

Afraid he would drop the knife and lose it in the mud and the dark, and then be unable to reach the extra blade he carried in his boot, and then have to wait for someone to finish freeing him after all, he pulled against the rope, pulled savagely, suddenly hating the pain that made him clumsy. And the girl who'd distracted him enough to be ambushed unaware.

Hating himself, because it was his fault, after all.

The cord was swollen with the wet, but Merlin kept his knife shaving-sharp. After a handful of sharp tugs that drew the rope tight and the blade across it, it parted, sending him stumbling back.

He kept his feet under him long enough to turn and weave toward the lighted tavern window. A foggy idea occurred to him, that he should take care not to fall through the glass; the door was to the left of the light. He fumbled the knife back into his belt, and hoped he hadn't cut himself – he wasn't sure he'd even feel it, anymore.

And then he tripped on the edge of the boardwalk, falling heavily on one knee and turning just in time to bang his shoulder instead of his forehead against the door. He heard himself cry out, then swore. Surely now the whole house would be awakened, at the moment when he wanted most to be left alone.

Merlin pushed himself upright again, and his fingers scrabbled for a moment before he managed to lift the door latch enough to enter. He blundered into the room, dimly noting the single candle burning on the bar. There was a roaring in his ears – he figured he'd be losing consciousness again soon. If he felt his way along the wall to his right, he'd find the stairs that would lead him to his room, his cot… he could collapse there. He could free his hands later, when he was better able to take care of himself again.

He found the wall mainly by letting his weight fall to the right, and supposed himself lucky once again that he'd missed the window. He pushed himself along, arms swinging stiffly in front of him with each step, sharp pain shouting through his body at the rubbing contact with the wall.

Merlin heard a voice, somewhere far away, and stopped, turning with a hint of his old swiftness. Instinctively he lifted his hands to push this person away, to ward off attack or aid alike, and felt his balance tip at the sudden move.

He wasn't going to make it to the stairs.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Freya had finished sweeping as Gwen and Shasta fed the fiddle player and saw him to the back door. The stranger and Al concluded their conversation in the tavern, and the blonde man disappeared upstairs to bed, saddlebags over his shoulder. Then she lit the candle they habitually left burning in the common room for an emergency nighttime illumination.

Every time she thought of Merlin's slow, sweet smile, her heart thudded more forcefully in her chest.

Words of Gaius' warning ran through her head, but she no longer considered herself in physical danger from Merlin. Though there were other kinds of danger to be in… _I'm a married woman_, she reminded herself, giving her shoulders a little shake and heading for bed.

Percy and Shasta were already behind the closed door of their room, their voices a low companionable murmur punctuated by her laugh. In the tiny closet-room next to the fireplace that they shared, Gwen was already curled up on the top bunk, her eyes closed, her breathing sounding deep and even. Asleep or not quite, she didn't speak when Freya entered.

_Where do my loyalties lie?_ Freya couldn't help asking herself. _I've told Merlin about Padlow. Will I tell Padlow about Merlin?_

Somehow the thought of that betrayal disturbed her more than its already partially accomplished converse.

Without bothering to undress, except to take off her shoes, she rolled into the lower bunk and clutched the blanket close to her chest. _Am I starting to care for Merlin more than I ought? What is the right thing to do? _She disciplined herself to envision the rest of her life being a good wife to Padlow, as all she had to hope for – and found the memory of that beautiful smile pushing in. _Let him smile at me again and mean it, _she thought,_ and I could live the rest of my life on it._

In the stillness above the soft murmur of rain outside and her own restless heart, she heard a muffled thump at the door of the tavern. She hadn't thought she'd fallen asleep, but it took a minute to open her eyes and concentrate on the sound that had pulled her alert. She sat up out of the bunk, her heart increasing its pace. They never locked the door, in case of nighttime travelers, but the noise hadn't sounded like a knock, and any traveler might be expected to hail the proprietor of the establishment upon entrance.

And Merlin always moved so noiselessly it was sometimes hard to tell if he'd slept in the room they kept for him, or not.

Uneasily she remembered that Burton had returned to Emmett's Creek only the previous day. There was that knobby club under the bar… Gwen sighed in her sleep, and there was only silence from Percy and Shasta's room.

Freya supposed she could scream, if she had to.

Hardly daring to breathe, Freya slipped out of the sleeping closet and tiptoed across the kitchen, pushing the door open enough to see into the common room. Soaked and muddy, stumbling like a drunkard, and with his back to her, Freya still recognized him in an instant.

"Merlin!" she gasped, hurrying into the room, worry quickly replacing her fear. He never drank enough to get drunk, and tonight had not been an exception, that she knew of. He had walked straight enough when he left.

He swung around unsteadily at the sound of her voice, and her hand flew to her mouth in shock. An angry bruise purpled the right half of his face from the eye swollen nearly shut to the lip split open and trickling blood. His hands were twisted in front of him, tied together with a thin rope dark with his blood.

"What happened?" she said, skirting the tables to reach his side swiftly, her hands moving to touch, to support him.

His eyes were glazed, his breath coming in great gulps. She could well believe he remained upright by willpower alone. He put out his hands as if to ward her off, but the movement seemed to unbalance him – he swayed for a moment, then pitched forward.

Freya instinctively tried to catch him, but it was impossible. He was taller than her, and heavier, and she only succeeded in breaking his fall as she held on and so tumbled to the floor with him, landing beneath him. She had a moment to feel relief that they hadn't knocked into any tables or chairs to cause any more damage – to him or the furniture – when the door to the kitchen crashed open against the wall.

"What in the name of Camelot is going on out here?" Percy's voice, raised in grumpy irritation. His bare feet stumped across the board floor toward them.

Freya wriggled, trying to get out from under Merlin's limp form without hurting him. Aware of the impropriety of her position, that the moisture from his soaked garments was beginning to seep through her dress. Aware, too, of the feel and smell of his body, the faint warmth of his panting breaths on her neck.

Percy swore, bending over them in a rush, dressed only in his trousers, muscles shifting beneath the hairy mat of his chest. Merlin was lifted suddenly away from her, Percy's fist bunched in the back of his shirt and vest.

"Don't!" Freya shouted, thinking that Percy's intention would be to save her from an attack, but that he'd misunderstood and might hurt Merlin further in his hurry and anger.

Percy halted his movement, having discovered for himself who he'd pulled off Freya, and that Merlin hung unresisting from his huge fist. Merlin began to stir, trying to lift his head; Percy swore again, this time in disbelief, and threw his other arm around the younger man, clearly trying to provide him greater support. Merlin's head rose and dropped back, exposing his throat.

"Let go of me!" he demanded thickly, and what his voice lacked in force, it made up for with menace. "Let me go, don't touch me!" he repeated breathlessly, the pain evident in his tone.

Percy lowered Merlin to the floor, leaned him against the leg of one of the tables, where he gasped once and arched his body as though trying to find a position to escape whatever hurt he felt. "What –" Percy began in bewilderment, but Freya scrambled quickly between them, reaching for Merlin's knife.

"Go for Gaius," she advised Percy. Merlin's hand closed around her wrist with only a fraction of the strength she knew he had, but it was enough to halt her movement.

"Percy?" Shasta's voice came from beyond the kitchen door, muffled. "What's going on?" Percy pushed back and stood.

"No," Merlin said clearly, in response to Freya's suggestion. He opened eyes intense with pain, fixing Percy in place with a glare.

Freya pried her hand free of Merlin's grip, and he allowed her to reach for the knife in his belt. She sawed at the cord that bit deep into his wrists as gently as she could, and blinked quickly against the tears that rose in her own eyes. She winced herself several times at the thought of the pain she must be causing him.

"Go back to bed," Merlin said harshly, addressing Percy. "I'll be fine."

"Go get Gaius, Percy," Freya repeated, as the last strands of the rope parted, and she had to peel the pieces back from the deep grooves cut in his skin. "He collapsed, he could barely stand or walk."

Merlin turned his gaze on her, those blue eyes so lately brimming with free amusement now dark with fury, startling her so she dropped his knife with a clatter. "Leave me alone," he ordered fiercely, and added a vehement oath.

"That doesn't look like you'll be fine," Percy observed, leaning over Freya.

"Percy!" Shasta's voice came again, probably from their bedroom off the kitchen.

"Get back." Merlin's voice shook slightly; Freya saw that he was controlling himself with an effort. She obeyed.

He flexed his hands once, twice, bunching his swollen fingers into fists, then placed his palms on the floor to push himself up. His jaw was clenched tight, and she suddenly felt a little afraid of him again. He made it to his feet, though he didn't straighten completely, and had to steady himself with a hand on the table. He seemed angry with himself for that, and angry with them for seeing. He waved Percy off, and put his hand gingerly to his side.

"The bleeding isn't bad," he said distinctly, his voice rough with the effort of controlling the pain.

Freya hoped he was referring to his wrists, and couldn't help wondering where else he was hurt. There was no blood on his clothes. What had happened? – Burton, probably.

Merlin continued, "I want to be left alone to sleep. I'll be fine in the morning." He stepped deliberately away from them, toward the staircase, but Freya noticed that he'd had to take a deep breath before he did.

"If you fall down the stairs, I'm leaving you until morning," Percy threatened. Merlin ignored him, and Percy shrugged to Freya.

She started resolutely to Merlin's side, determined to help him whether he wanted it or not, but he stopped her with one look – the look he'd turned on her in the wake of the only tears he'd shed, the day she noticed the color of his eyes. The look of bottomless hate.

"And _you_," he said, making the word into a weapon that he hurled at her. "You stay away from me."


	7. Aid and Advice

**Chapter 7: Aid and Advice**

_ "You stay away from me."_

Her eyes dropped at Merlin's snarled command, and she stepped back, the look of startled hurt quickly wiped blank from her face. And without her smile, and with her large expressive eyes lowered, she looked quite plain again.

But if Burton had any further suspicions about the two of them – especially with his farfetched accusation of intimacy – he'd take it out on Freya. For Merlin didn't intend to allow himself to be taken by surprise again. Ever. By anyone.

Percy left the common room as Merlin made his way slowly to the staircase, but he was aware that Freya followed him silently, and stood at the foot of the steps as he mounted them stiffly. He guessed that she took Percy at his word to leave him laying there, and also didn't trust that he could make it on his own. He didn't turn around, even when he reached the top.

Merlin pushed open the door of his room and leaned against the frame for a moment, trying to find a way to breathe that didn't hurt. A door opened further down the narrow hallway and Arthur came out, bootless and still buttoning his untucked shirt, alerted by the commotion they'd made – well, _he'd_ made – downstairs. Merlin entered his room immediately and turned to close the door behind him, but Arthur pushed through. And swore.

"What happened to you?" he demanded.

"Get out," Merlin said shortly, his embarrassment coming out in anger. Arthur studied him keenly, then reached to help Merlin undress. "Get. Out," Merlin repeated, gritted through his teeth to disguise the pain.

"Shut up," Arthur returned without blinking.

"I don't need your help," Merlin snapped, well aware that he couldn't prevent Arthur helping him. Well aware that if he slapped Arthur's hand away as he'd once slapped Shasta's hands, he'd be starting a fight he couldn't finish, much less win.

Arthur gave him a hard look, his blue eyes flat. His fingers never stilled as he eased Merlin's soaked vest off and began to unbutton his shirt. "Let me tell you something," he said. "And you remember this well. I'm not your friend. I don't even like you. I may feel sympathy for you on occasion, knowing what was done to your family, but you attacked me and left me for dead, and something like that doesn't get forgiven and forgotten. As you should well know."

Merlin opened his mouth to claim belligerently that he wasn't sorry for it, either. His fifteen-year-old self simply couldn't have taken three years in Uther's service, unable to hunt down the murderer. And the dreams had already started when the agent had come for him.

Arthur cut him off. "That being said, I'm going to give you a good piece of advice – learn when to swallow your pride and accept help. What good does it do you to sleep in wet clothes and wake up even more stiff than you already –"

He peeled Merlin's shirt back from his body and stopped. Repeating his earlier oath more slowly, he let go of the sodden cloth to lay quick and probing fingers along the dark bruising on Merlin's stomach, around his sides, and up toward his chest. Merlin sucked in his breath and held it, clenching his teeth against the pang and indignity of the inspection, but otherwise endured silently, gazing over the top of Arthur's head.

"Who?" Arthur demanded. When Merlin didn't answer, his eyes flicked up to take in his expression, and the agent answered his own question. "Burton."

"Nothing's broken." Merlin twisted his shoulders painfully, shrugging out of the wet shirt. "I don't think," he amended.

Arthur looked then at the thick bloody welts around his wrists, but didn't move to touch him again, only narrowed his eyes as Merlin slung his wet clothes over the end of the cot. Merlin then turned to the rickety corner commode to rinse the mud from his hands in the basin and use the towel to dry his hair.

"You let him ambush you?" Arthur said from behind.

Merlin swung back around long enough to open his mouth and calmly let out a curse that was as remarkable in its vulgarity as it was in its length without repetition. It also left Arthur no need to speculate on Merlin's feelings concerning Burton. A wry grin of amusement twisted the agent's mouth.

"Don't tell me what you really think of the man," he said, as Merlin turned back to the commode and pulled the towel over his wet hair. "Was it just revenge for his ear?"

Burton, and therefore Reeve Whatley, thought Arthur his partner in the theft of the record book, whether for blackmail or a coup. After tonight they might consider Merlin safely out of the way, and as long as they believed Freya uninvolved, might go after Arthur next. After all, the book was in his possession. And if Burton killed Arthur, that part of Merlin's bargain would be nullified, himself free as a bird after killing Padlow. He'd made no guarantee to turn himself over to anyone but Arthur.

But he hesitated just long enough for the well-tuned suspicions of the agent to awaken.

"There was something else," Arthur said. "Was it the girl?"

Merlin rubbed the towel carefully over his head and let it settle around his neck. His arms felt like stiff hot pokers as he braced himself against the wall to remove his boots, prying each off with the toe of the opposite foot. And didn't answer. He could say yes, could claim truthfully enough that Burton had acted in jealousy as well as revenge.

But then he might get drawn into a discussion of the possibility that Burton might target Freya as well, and he didn't want to have to admit that he had provoked the trapper into lengthening his own beating to try to protect her. Why had he done that, anyway? He wasn't comfortable with the question inside his own head, and definitely didn't want someone else speculating as well.

"No, something more," Arthur murmured, as if to himself, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. "He tied you, that means he didn't trust his odds in a fair fight, and he was right. But after he'd ambushed you –"

Merlin turned his back on the agent to let down his trousers, and Arthur was on him in a second, tipping his head forward and separating his hair to examine the initial blow to the back of his head. Merlin shrugged him off violently, irritably, though it made him dizzy, and Arthur withdrew.

"Once he had you down with _that_, he could've kept you down fairly easily," Arthur mused. "Tying you up was more work – he wasn't just getting his own back, or warning you off the girl. He could've done that with a word or two after he kicked the stuffing out of you. He was asking questions, wasn't he? About me."

Merlin wrapped the blanket from the bed around his battered body and lowered himself to the cot, breathing through his nose against the urge to pant slightly. He risked a glance at the agent. Arthur was looking at him differently, knowing the abuse to be interrogation rather than simple infliction of pain for its own sake. He was all business now, back to being one of Uther's agents, focused on the task at hand. Merlin released his breath slowly, trying to consider the best course of action around the headache throbbing through his whole body.

"He knows you have the record book," he said. "Reeve Whatley must've seen it in your bags and told him. But he takes us for thieves and blackmailers."

"Hm." Arthur's blue eyes studied him sharply. "Does he take us for cowards sufficiently warned off?"

Merlin straightened, but didn't meet the agent's gaze, instead pouring out his hate on the wall over Arthur's shoulder. The impotent anger at the way things had to be.

Arthur began to pace the small room, door to high curtainless window and back again. "Well, I'm not going to hand the book back," he said. "I need that for evidence."

"He didn't ask for it," Merlin said. He glanced sideways at the flat pillow on the cot, wishing Arthur would leave him alone to sleep.

"Well, they'll think of it sooner or later," Arthur said vaguely. "It might be best to go along with that assumption, even bargain if they bring it up. In the meantime, I'll look for work like I gave out, and keep up my investigation."

_Damn you, too_, Merlin thought wearily, and lifted his feet to the edge of the cot, spreading himself very slowly along its length.

Arthur glanced down at him. "You try to steer clear of any ambushes," he said, with a trace of humor.

This time Merlin spoke the curse aloud.

Arthur grinned as he opened the door and retreated. "You'll live," were his parting words.

Relaxing made Merlin's muscles ache more, if only momentarily, but he forced them to release deliberately, inch by inch. His pride smarted, too, but that was soon lost in sleep.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Much later, Merlin opened his eyes and focused on the rafters above him, through a strange silver sheen from the room's tiny window overlooking the main street, just over the head of the cot. His neck felt creaky as he turned his head sideways on the pillow.

And froze.

There his dead family, ranged against the wall opposite, only scant feet away. Instinctively he tried to move, to push himself back against the wall where the cot stood, to get further away. But his arms and legs refused to obey.

He lifted his head to gaze down the length of his body with a fresh wave of horror. Wrapped in a white sheet as though prepared for his grave, his hands were tied together over his chest, his arms and legs bound tightly. He twisted back around to stare at his family, in a panic that they might approach, might touch him. Appeals for help, for mercy, bubbled up in his throat, but his lips and tongue were too thick to voice them.

They stood in the clothes that he had last seen them wearing, down to his mother's second-best apron put on for company approaching and the wilted daisy stuck in his next-oldest sister's hair. No trace of blood on their clothing, no grave-bindings on their limbs. The sisters watched him, wide-eyed, but upright and straight. It was as though he and he alone had died that day.

"You," said his father, but that was all.

After a moment, his mother added, pityingly, "Sometimes."

"Need," said the sister with the daisy.

And, "Help," said the baby, looking solemn. They all stayed where they were, motionless against the wall.

Merlin felt the fear and horror still welling inside of him, bubbling up, but not overflowing.

"You," said his father again, in the tone of voice he used when telling Merlin something for the last time.

"Must," his mother said.

"Find."

"Peace," the baby sighed. She looked so peaceful herself, so natural, that Merlin almost expected her to hook her first two fingers in her mouth as she stared back at him.

"Listen!" his father said urgently.

"To."

"Your," said the older of the two sisters, but then the baby paused so long Merlin wondered if he'd wake before they finished. His throat hurt as if he'd been screaming, but he hadn't heard himself make a sound.

"Heart," the baby finished finally.

He suddenly realized he wanted to answer them, to talk to them again, to hear them laugh. Many times they had spoken to him, had screamed and whispered, but he had never been able to choke back the fear and despair enough to answer. _Forgive me?_ he wanted to say. _I didn't know. I would have been there if I knew_.

His father's bearded face softened. "We."

"Love." Were those tears shining in his mother's eyes?

"You."

The baby smiled and lisped, "Merlin."

The room was growing bright with the gold of sunlight, and just as the sun's first rays gradually burn off the fog that gathers in low-lying hollows in the meadows, the morning light suffused the deathly gray, and his family began to fade. His mother lifted one hand in a wave of farewell.

And he heard singing.

It was a familiar tune, one his mother had taught him as a little boy. But the words were different. The voice was different; he knew it but couldn't quite name the singer. No one else was in the room. He was incredibly weary, and sore to his bones, but now he knew he could close his eyes again and sleep.

And as he drifted off, he listened to the strange words of the familiar song:

_Take my hand now, there's no knowing_

_Where the nighttime breeze is blowing…_

_I'm your shelter, I'll protect you_

_Believe in me, I swear I'll stay true…_

_And when you open your eyes,_

_I'll still be here by your side…_

_I'm the dream you're going to live with every day –_

_May your night be peaceful with me watching where you lay…_

_Somewhere a new day is breaking,_

_Till it's your time to be waking… _

_Sweet dreams._

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

As Percy left the main room to return to bed, Freya followed Merlin to the staircase.

She didn't care what he stubbornly maintained, she had seen him collapse only moments before, and she was not letting him take chances – he could break his neck falling down the stairs.

He ignored her, as she expected, and she stopped at the foot of the stairs to watch him place each boot carefully on the next step, making his slow way to the top. He had allowed her to help him navigate the stairs once before, but it didn't seem that he would allow it again tonight, so she didn't offer.

Freya hadn't forgotten the hatred that made his eyes dark to black when he looked at her. And she couldn't help but remember the heavy warm feeling of his body relaxed against hers. It made her nervous to get too close.

But she also remembered what had happened during the night after each of the fights he'd been in since arriving in Emmett's Creek, though none quite so violent as the first, the fight he'd lost due to his weakened condition and the knobby club Percy had pulled from its place under the bar. They'd initially made an attempt to help the stranger clean himself up and have a hot dinner, but that hadn't gone very well. Later in the night, Reeve Whatley had slammed into the tavern, claiming his new prisoner was like to tear up the jail and he needed Percy to help control him. Shasta wouldn't believe the reeve, and had insisted on going along.

Freya had gone as well, because she was still awake, and didn't want to be alone at the tavern with only Gwen, and because she was curious about the stranger, the only one who had reacted to save her from a dart in the back.

Merlin frightened her more asleep, than awake. Awake, she'd seen the cold control he exercised over himself, even in the two fights Percy had broken up. In the woods that rainy afternoon he'd had the perfect opportunity to do to her whatever harm he'd wished, and instead he'd saved her from a fall and sheltered her from the rain.

Asleep – she shivered as she watched him lean against the door frame like an old man searching for energy and will to continue. Asleep, there was no controlling the wild thing that raged inside of him.

Shasta had run for Gaius, and Freya had never seen Shasta move swiftly for anyone. Percy and Reeve Whatley finally managed to bind the prisoner in his own blanket, for his sake as well as theirs, but it had been no easy task, both men sweating and pale when they'd finished. And still he struggled, when they lifted him to the wagon and took him back to the tavern under Gaius' orders; he'd bucked and kicked until Gaius had poured the sleeping draught down his throat - and half over the blanket and cot as well, she remembered. Counting the minutes until the old physician's medicine had taken effect, and the stranger had gone as still as death.

Merlin turned abruptly into his room, closely followed by the blonde-haired stranger from his own room further down the hall. Good. At least he wasn't alone. The new stranger had the same look as Merlin, the look of a man who knew he could handle himself in a fight; she felt sure he could handle Merlin for now.

Freya seated herself on the lowest step, avoiding the mud from Merlin's bootprints. She couldn't hear their voices inside the room, and didn't care to. She'd have moved, probably, if she could hear what they were saying. She wasn't sure she believed their story of meeting on the road and looking for work.

Her mind drifted to the conversation she'd had with Merlin in the rain, that day. They'd spoken of their nightmares – at least, she'd spoken of hers and he'd nodded like he understood all too well. Gaius might believe he'd had a seizure that first night; Shasta and Gwen, who'd helped tend him while unconscious, did not dispute it. But Freya had guessed differently.

The guttural snarls and wordless protests were frightening to hear, but the way he thrashed and twisted seemed to her an attempt to escape whatever he was experiencing in his mind. And the few words and phrases she could understand when she was in the room – _Father, don't_ and _Mother, please_ and _Where were you, Merlin_ – had convinced her that he had horrors in his past that haunted him in his sleep.

_Horrors connected with Padlow?_ she wondered uneasily, and hoped not.

After each fight he'd been in since, she'd woken to hear the same struggle and cries from his room, though not violently enough that she'd called Shasta or Gaius. It was logical to assume he would have nightmares again tonight, whether the fight had been won or lost. Which was it?

She didn't think Merlin had it in him to give up and admit himself beaten by anyone, so the simple fact that he'd walked through the door would indicate a victory. But his wrists, scraped raw as they were by the rope that had tied them together, bothered her. He had been tied? He'd never been caught off guard by anything, at any time, since she'd known him.

Freya hadn't been sitting long on the bottom stair when she heard the door of Merlin's room open, and the blonde stranger speak.

"You'll live," he said, in a tone of wry amusement.

She didn't move. Either he would retreat down the hall to his own room and never know she was there, or two steps would bring him to the head of the stairs, in which case he would see her no matter how quickly she fled. A moment later she heard the second upstairs door close.

And there was silence in the tavern. The candle habitually left on the bar cast flickering shadows around the room she knew nearly by heart. Hadn't she wiped each table and rearranged each chair a thousand times? Didn't she sweep every corner, every night she was here? This place meant peace to her, and safety. It was home. The little shack in the woods was torment and exile. This was home.

Idly she wondered where Merlin's home was.

Freya remembered his smile, again, and wished she'd met him years ago, before her mother died. Before whatever had happened to him. Maybe then, there would have been no reason to buy passage with the tax farmer and his peddler's wagon to her mother's second cousin. And Padlow wouldn't have taken her as wife instead. She sighed.

She should go back to bed, back to her bunk below Gwen. As far as tonight was concerned, Merlin's new friend would probably be first to hear him, if he cried out in his sleep. In a dream. And if he needed anyone else, there was Percy and Shasta. No need for her to sit up; her bunk was warm and comfortable.

Freya pulled her bare feet up onto the step, and stuffed the hem of her skirt around them. And leaned her head on her arm on a higher step, again careful to avoid the muddy patches. She'd sweep it up in the morning, when it had dried to dust. For now, she'd be uncomfortable enough to stay awake. Just for a while. Just in case he needed clean water, or – or something. She was, after all, a maid in the tavern, and he a guest – an injured guest, at that. It was hospitality that kept her there at the foot of the stairs when everyone else had gone to bed.  
>And so it was that she was the one to hear his sleep-mutterings.<p>

At first it was a low grumble of sound, a growl made by a human throat, steadily rising. Unmistakable to one who'd heard it more than once before.

Freya rose and crept up the stairs, every sense alert. Ready to duck and bolt if the blonde stranger woke and came out of his room – but she could hear the ragged sound of that one's snoring through the walls.

She paused by Merlin's door, then inched it open.

While she'd been sitting drowsily on the stairs, the rainclouds had cleared enough to let moonlight through the room's single high window overlooking the street. Enough so she could see that he lay on his back on the cot, wrapped in the gray wool blanket.

His head turned on the pillow, this way and that, again seeking escape from his dreams, but he wasn't thrashing about uncontrollably. Yet.

She eased into the room. There would be no excuse for her, for this, if any should discover her. Gaius had warned her. But she couldn't leave Merlin alone, not tonight. Not like this.

He whimpered in his throat, a vulnerable sound.

She should've brought the candle. But what if he should wake to find her here? She answered herself, _what if he should_? He could throw her out, he could keep her and force her to lie with him; Padlow had done both on many occasions. Worst thing, he'd wake the household and embarrass her.

Freya crossed to the side of his cot. The faint moonlight outlined his nose and cheekbones, the curve of his upper lip, leaving the rest of his face in shadow. She reached out her hand – and paused, her fingers scant inches from touching him. If he were awake, she'd never dare.

_Silly girl_, she scolded herself. If he were awake, he'd have already demanded that she leave him alone.

_Stay away from me_, he'd said. With all that anger and hate burning in his eyes.

She shivered. How could one person hold so much anger without burning himself up? She laid her hand on his forehead, damp with sweat, but cool. No fever, then.

When he spoke, it was so sudden and clear that she jumped back and almost lost her balance. "You – sometimes – need – help." With an odd pause between each word. His head was tipped away from her; had he spoken to her? What a strange thing to say. Was he still dreaming? He spoke again, "You – must – find – peace."

She knew she needed help; wasn't it obvious to everyone? Percy and Shasta and Gaius have her help just to live, every day. And she thought she'd found peace in accepting her lot as Padlow's wife, in trying to do the best she could.

Then he said, "We – love - you – Merlin." And she knew he was talking in his sleep. His voice sounded so bereft, so sad and lonely. So empty.

Before she knew it, she was on her knees beside his cot, brushing her fingertips across his hair, still damp from the rain. And humming. It was an old song, one she didn't remember learning. A lullaby, of sorts. She sang the words so low, she was almost whispering.

His head moved beneath her fingers like a sleepy child seeking comfort. Then he lay still.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin woke in the morning feeling refreshed. Which was odd, considering last night's beating, and the dreams.

The feeling only lasted until he moved. Simply turning his head on the pillow pulled sore muscles halfway down his back. It was going to be a bad day.

He heard Arthur stirring in the room next to his, and it was the prod he needed to force himself upright – his pride wouldn't allow the agent to find him still lying abed. And he figured Arthur wouldn't pass his room without checking on him. He was right.

The agent pushed the door open seconds later without even knocking, still buttoning his vest. "How do you feel?" Arthur asked, without a trace of sympathy.

"Peachy," Merlin said sourly, squinting at him. One of his eyes didn't want to open all the way. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. He looked for his clothes – mostly dry, but caked in mud from the street.

"Take it easy for a while," Arthur recommended. "But don't stay in bed all day."

Growling, Merlin made it to his feet, and caught the blanket as it fell to his waist.

Gwen rounded the corner with a fat cream-colored pitcher held in both hands and slopping water down her apron. Gaping at the patchwork of bruises around his midsection that had appeared while he slept, she poured the fresh water into the pitcher on the commode in the corner – with the result that it overflowed before she was aware, dripping down the commode and puddling on the floorboards. She mopped at the spilled water with a corner of her apron hastily, but ended up pushing more to the floor than was soaked up by the material.

"You want a bath drawn?" she asked, her eyes on her work.

Arthur lifted his eyebrows at Merlin, as if to ask, _who is she speaking to_?

Merlin said, "Why, so you can watch?"

His rotten mood didn't seem to faze Gwen much; more and more she was taking her cue from Shasta, who was intimidated by nothing and no one, and seemed to find him amusing. A second set of footsteps began to mount the steps as Gwen shrugged one shoulder and smiled up at Arthur. She opened her mouth to say something more to him, maybe to ask a question, but at that moment Arthur glanced sideways down the hall to whoever was coming slowly up the stairs, and moved out of the doorway.

The agent commented, "You look tired this morning," as Freya came into sight.

She didn't answer him; her attention was focused on the tray she was carrying. Merlin's first thought was _breakfast tray,_ and he scowled – they thought he couldn't make it downstairs this morning, did they?

"Shasta's looking for you, Gwen," Freya murmured, balancing the tray on one hand as she made space for it on top of the commode. Gwen shrugged again, dividing a friendly smile between Merlin and Arthur, and left the room to clatter down the stairs.

Arthur said to Merlin, "Looks like you're in good hands," and followed Gwen.

An awkward silence followed; Freya seemed reluctant to meet his eyes.

"No need for you to stay," Merlin said gruffly. Assuming she'd take her chance to high-tail it as Gwen had, he turned to where his saddlebags lay beneath his cot for a clean change of clothes, and let the blanket fall, dropping it on the cot. He grunted as he stepped into his trousers, stiffly and not paying attention to anything but bruised muscles.

She said breathlessly, "Shasta thought it would be a good idea to clean and bandage your wrists. Percy must have told her…" He glanced over his shoulder; she had turned her back to him as he dressed. She looked down at the floor, then took his half-dried towel from the commode and knelt to wipe up the water Gwen had spilled. She added, "And any other injuries that need it?"

Over her bent head he saw that the tray she'd carried up didn't hold dishes of food, but instead a bowl of steaming milky-white water, a little jar, a small sponge, and a roll of cotton for bandages. He leaned into his shirt and tucked it in slowly, then buckled his belt. He felt like lying back down and going to sleep again; asleep, he wouldn't feel the pain of his abused body. If he could keep from dreaming.

She stood and turned, hanging the towel on the bar across the back of the commode. "I can help you with that, if you like," she offered, still not meeting his eyes.

Was he not still enduring pain that partially stemmed from Burton's misunderstanding of things between the two of them? Could she not just leave him alone? "Go away," he said tiredly. "I don't want your help."

She opened her mouth and closed it again, as though trying to decide if she should speak her mind. Then she ventured, "You sometimes need help," very quietly and with a rising inflection, like a question. Still not meeting his eyes.

He stood as if frozen; he couldn't have been more stunned if she'd punched him in the stomach. She couldn't know – how could she know what he'd dreamed? She couldn't. He sat down on the cot, too abruptly, and winced.

She moved to kneel in front of him, where she could still reach the tray, submerged the sponge in the steaming water, and squeezed it out. And reached for his right hand. He pushed his sleeve up with his left.

"Why do you risk it?" he asked shortly.

"Risk what?" She began dabbing at the dried blood smeared on his hand and arm, not touching the rope-weal yet.

"Being nice to me."

She didn't lift her face, but he saw her lips curve in a small smile. "What is the risk?" she inquired. It reminded him strongly of the night he'd spend in Reeve Whatley's jail, when Percy and Shasta had left her alone in his cell to say her thanks.

"You don't seem to realize that I could do just about anything to you, and be done with it before I even let anyone hear you scream," he said. "Anything at all."

She gave her head a little shake. Her hands were steady and gentle, and never paused. "You had your chance," she said, and looked up at him then. Her eyes were dark, and unfathomably deep. She added quietly, "It's nothing that hasn't been done before, anyway."

He studied her face with skepticism, not sure if she understood what he alluded to. Then he realized she spoke the truth; it was not naiveté, it was experience. She blushed under his scrutiny, and dropped her eyes to her work.

"Burton?" he asked.

"He's tried. He hasn't caught me alone for a long time."

"Padlow?"

She paused, dipped her head a little more. It was answer enough.

_His own wife_. Anger coursed through Merlin; his hands clenched into fists before he realized it. "Why do you stay with him?" he blurted.

She shrugged one shoulder. "He married me," she said tonelessly, stating fact. "I am his wife. It is something I must make the best of."

One more thing to be avenged when Padlow drew his last breath. She would be free even as Merlin would, when it was over. He tried to shift the thought of Arthur aside; with Padlow dead, he could sit in a cell for a year and be happy to do it. At least he could relive his revenge in satisfaction every day. If there was satisfaction to be had; he frowned, recalling his conversation with Gaius.

"I am hurting you?" Freya said, drawing him back to the present.

He glanced down; she'd paused, the sponge reddish with his blood. "No," he said, so she continued her work. "You ever think what you'd do if he – never came back?"

She took a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh. "Of course. But as long as he does come back, I – do what I can. Live one day at a time."

"He doesn't deserve it," Merlin said roughly. She was starting to dab at the deep groove rubbed into his wrist, and whatever Shasta had put into the hot water stung. It made him angry. "You of all people should want to pay him back for what he's done. You know just as well as any, and better than some, what he's done."

"That's not an excuse. I have to do what's right, in spite of him."

"What if the right thing to do goes against your loyalty to him?" Merlin asked suddenly. She sat back on her heels, raising her eyes to his. There was a sharpness there he'd never seen before. He'd taken her to be a little dull, a little slow. Maybe he'd been wrong.

"You are one of Uther's agents?" she said.

"Arthur is."

She nodded once, a faraway look in her eyes. "And you are what, a bounty-man? A thief-catcher?"

He weighed his options swiftly. If she should tell Padlow everything, Padlow might seek him out, would probably seek him out – which was what he wanted anyway, a confrontation. There was little risk of a man with his reputation hiding til danger was past. But if she did so, Arthur could take her as Padlow's accomplice, and she probably knew that, too. On the other hand, she might be persuaded to give testimony against Padlow, if she could be convinced it was the right thing for her to do, rather than warning her husband that the law was seeking him.

He decided to be completely honest, and leave the choice to her. "I am a revenger," he said.

**A/N: Thank you to reviewers who I haven't gotten back to in a PM! You are all appreciated, very much!**


	8. Sympathies

**Chapter 8: Sympathies**

"_I am a revenger."_

Whatever Freya had expected to hear, this wasn't it. But after a moment's reflection, it made sense. He wasn't after Padlow for the money, though, it was personal, somehow. That explained the hate.

Of course, now she was in a dilemma.

Uther's agents had very clear and indisputable authority. She would be bound to honesty with such a man, and also complete and unquestioning obedience, as would any. But a revenger was a private person, with equal standing as she before the law, with no right to command obedience or truth, no consequences if she refused.

He was watching her, blue eyes dark and hooded.

Her hands went about their business of cleaning the marks on his wrists on their own, it seemed; he had denied the pain of his wounds, and she could see no indication that he lied. He was a very hard man - he would show no mercy to her husband.

Of course, Padlow had never been a merciful man, either.

"Why?" she said. It was the same question she'd asked Padlow, the morning after he'd taken her. He'd backhanded her for answer, and she'd never asked him again. But Merlin wouldn't do something like that, she believed that as surely as she believed the sky was blue. He might be dangerous and mean and full of hate, but he did not delight in cruelty and inflicting pain.

"Why what?" he said.

"Why are you a revenger?" She squeezed the sponge out and took his left hand gently, turning it so she could clean the inside of his wrist.

"Does it matter?" he said bluntly.

"It's just not something you think of a man choosing to do, like other professions," she said. "Not something a father raises his son to do, or sends him to be apprenticed in." She glanced up at him; his face was like rock, his eyes fixed distantly on a point over her head. "It's – quite a violent business, I understand," she faltered.

It was a long moment before he answered. "It can be," he conceded dispassionately.

She thought of the speed of his reflexes in turning Burton's dart back on him, in catching her from falling from the tree. The unflinching way he threw himself into a fight… the way she'd seen him stride across the half-finished roof of Gaius' office without a glance down or single misstep. But…

"Violence doesn't come naturally to you," she said. "For some it seems to, but… not for you."

"I learned," he said, his voice like cold steel. "I had to."

The hate was back, she saw. So whatever was in his past that had brought him seeking Padlow for revenge was tied to his choice of profession. Perhaps he'd become a revenger for that purpose, even. But at least he wasn't looking at her now, hating her.

"I know that I'm probably the last person you want to talk to," she said haltingly. "I'm not blind or stupid, I know that my husband must have wronged you, and you seek to –"

"Me?" he interrupted, his voice thick with scorn. "_Me_? No. He has done nothing to _me_."

"Then who?" she said. The intensity of his gaze bored into her as if he would read her soul. She held that gaze, determined to hold if it burned right through her.

"If I talk to you, you would tell it to him if he asked, wouldn't you?"

She felt a little color rise to her face. "I'm not in the habit of telling what I've promised not to," she returned.

His voice was even, but she couldn't help flinching at the question. "Are there many in Emmett's Creek who confide in you, then?"

She looked down then, and didn't respond, studying her hands in her lap, then reached for the strips of cotton Shasta had given her for bandages. She felt his eyes on her, watching her coat the strips with salve so they would not stick to the open wounds. She lifted it toward him; he did not move to accommodate her, but when she took his hand again, he let her position it and didn't draw back.

"I have been here four and a half years," she said softly, winding the bandage slowly and carefully around his wrist. "Padlow brought me here in the back of his cart, and everyone looked at me as you are looking at me now. Except for my friends – Gaius and Alice, Percy and Shasta, and Gwen. I am not as close to any of them as I was once to my mother, but yes, sometimes they tell me things they ask me not to repeat, and I've kept their secrets. And Padlow – does not ask me questions."

"If you do not keep your distance from me," he said deliberately, "that may change when he returns."

"What do you mean?" she said, trying the end of the bandage and tucking the ends under neatly. She did not raise her eyes to his face, but instead focused on his hand. He had strong hands, with long fingers and rough calluses. Nice hands. Cleaner than she had ever seen Padlow's.

"Gaius told me, I haven't hidden the fact that I'd like to act on my hatred for my enemy," he said. "It won't be long after he returns til he knows about me, and if we don't meet immediately, he'll want to learn all he can of me. You're the likeliest person for him to ask."

"Why me?" Freya said, beginning to soak a second bandage in the salve. "I told you, he doesn't ask me –"

"Burton thinks you and I might be – involved."

For a moment Freya's attention was caught by the conviction that he'd used the word _involved_ instead of something more harsh, even obscene. Then the realization of what he meant hit her, and she gaped at him, feeling her face flush.

His mouth twisted wryly. "He's jealous," he said, again referring to the trapper.

"Burton did this to you," she said, dropping her eyes to his wrist, remembering the horrible bruising on the rest of his body she'd glimpsed before turning away to give him some privacy, "because he was jealous?"

He straightened stiffly. "I asked you why you risked being nice to me," he said in a hard voice. "The risk is not only what I might do to you, but others, too."

She thought about that for a moment, then gave a little shrug and laid one end of the bandage to his other wrist. She would not stop being who she was, doing kindness where she could, just because someone like Burton was jealous.

He was silent as she wound the second bandage carefully around his wrist. The room was small, and she found herself increasingly aware of his proximity.

And her senses began to betray her, sending her shy little messages about the strength in the fingers that brushed hers, the warm intimate whispers of each breath he took, the knowledge that his eyes were still on her. How he'd lain injured and vulnerable in his dreams, and had calmed to her touch. How differently he was speaking to her since their last conversation in the tree shelter, how differently…

She risked a quick glance up into his eyes, just inches from hers, and saw darkness and depth. Pain and anger. And also uncertainty, which was unusual.

But no hatred, not directed at her. He had spoken to her. He had all but warned her about Burton.

What had changed?

Gaius' warning came into her mind. "Just be careful around him," he'd told her. And Alice had said it was a pity, whatever had happened to make him the way he was, strung like a fiddle-string, turned once too many times and ready to snap at a single wrong touch. So deeply troubled that he fought even his dreams. So poisoned by his hate that he'd driven himself into illness before he'd even reached Emmett's Creek, and had spent several days unconscious and delirious as a result.

But his smile was so young…

"I will tell Padlow nothing of you," she said. "Nor would Gaius or Percy, Shasta or Gwen." She tied the second bandage neatly, and sat back on her heels.

The room still felt small, even with the door open; the wall opposite the cot was almost at her back. He shrugged as though it mattered little, the tough exterior he wore closer than his skin settling over him like the scowl that shaded his eyes. He began turning the cuffs of his shirtsleeves down over his newly-bandaged wrists.

So odd. So unlike Padlow. What _had_ happened to him, to set him on this hard road?

She didn't realize that she'd spoken her last thought aloud, until he pushed abruptly to his feet. He wasn't the tallest man she'd ever seen, nor so large as a number of men in Emmett's Creek, namely Percy, but he could move quicker than thought. She lost her balance and collapsed awkwardly against the wall, moving instinctively away from him.

He frowned down at her, then an instant later was bending to raise her gently to her feet. Bending, when every movement caught his breath like someone was jabbing a nail into his ribs. And his hands were gentle on her arms as well as strong.

She was right. He _could_ be kind.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Her question was like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, and Merlin covered his reaction by helping her to her feet.

"Why do you care?" he said roughly.

She took a step back, a step that had her back to the wall. "I – I don't –" she said, a little breathlessly.

"Get out," he said, turning to find his boots. Every movement pulled hard at bruised muscles – and maybe one cracked rib – but he wouldn't allow himself to feel it. "Get out."

She moved quietly and quickly, but paused at the door; he felt this rather than saw it, with his back to her. That's what he got for letting his tongue run away with him. _Women are never satisfied with what you tell them, they always have to ask one more question. _ And somehow manage to find the one sure to prod at the most vulnerable place. He heard her on the stairs, descending.

Merlin stamped into his boots and paused. He needed to find work, again. Needed to keep his body hard, reflexes quick. Needed to distract his mind from Gaius' troublesome questions. Half his time waiting in Emmett's Creek had passed, and when the weather drove Padlow home again, like a bear to its lair at first snowfall, he needed to be ready. Since there was no more work to be done on Gaius' office, he needed another job. Only, with his muscles screaming in protest at every slow step down the tavern's stairs, and the question of a cracked rib unanswered, what could he do?

So it was back to planning, at least for today. And that would keep his mind occupied, anyway.

He needed to figure Arthur out, to learn enough to be able to guess the man's reactions accurately. He'd observed him all the way from Camelot, seen how he'd adjusted his own plans on the spur of seeing Merlin again, seen him flexible and autonomous enough to ride five days into the end of nowhere and stay – for how long? months, until Padlow returned? – to check on an accusation of dishonesty. He'd seen him play Gaius' game of information exchanged, and gain a good idea of the tenor of Emmett's Creek from one man's stories. Now he'd watch how the agent went about his job.

_Go to Leon_, Percy had advised. Biggest ranch in the Emmett's Creek region, and seven leagues northeast. So be it.

Merlin heard the family in the kitchen at breakfast, and knew he would have to force the considerations of hunger from his mind later in the day. Not a problem; going hungry was something he'd done regularly since…

He left the tavern and crossed the street to the livery stables, avoiding the standing puddles. It was early, but Emmett's Creek was already awake and beginning to bustle with the day's activities. He noticed that someone had removed the rope from the stable signpost.

Next door to the stable, Elyan was lighting his forge. Usually the skinny stable attendant also readied the smith's shop for the day; Merlin made a quick and impulsive detour. Elyan glanced at him, unconcerned, as he gave the head-high bellows lever a few experimental heaves.

"Kendall sleeping in, is he?" Merlin remarked, referring to Elyan's skinny employee. It occurred to him that Elyan would be a challenge in a fight; Merlin might be quick enough to offset the hard muscles in the blacksmith's arms and shoulders. Maybe. He had a few inches of height for advantage, too – it would be an interesting fight, anyway.

"Kenny's leg is broken," Elyan told him. "He was kicked in the shin by a mule two days ago."

Well, why not? Hard work, and long, he wanted. "How is it going alone?" he ventured, as if he did not care, either way. The smith only grunted. "Have you thought about taking someone on?"

A sharper glance from the other's eyes, shiny and black. "You?" Merlin shrugged noncommittally. "I've seen you working on the physician's roof," the blacksmith said. "You're a hard worker, fast and skillful. But you're moving slow and stiff, this morning."

Merlin bared his teeth in a grin. "A fight," he said. What else? He didn't have to say how it ended, though.

Elyan grunted again. "If you work for me, there'll be none of that, in my place or on my time, you got it?" Merlin jerked his head by way of assent. "Will you be moving a little quicker tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Merlin said for confirmation, and moved back toward the stable. His body had taken a severe punishment, but he would survive. He always did.

Saddling the nag was another round of torture that left Merlin a bit trembly, and clammy with sweat. But reasonably sure the ribs in question were intact. He mounted stiffly, and rode out the rear doors of the stable instead of onto the main street.

It was past sunrise, but the sky was overcast with gray; Merlin would have bet money the sun wouldn't show til the next day. Not a breath of air stirred, warm even without the sun. Summer had passed its peak and would now decline, but slowly. The sparse grass on the hills around town had been brown and yellow for weeks, but now the leaves would be starting to change their color, too. Winter, and Padlow, would soon be making a slow way toward Emmett's Creek. The thought made Merlin grimace a smile of anticipation around the jolts of pain that rippled through him at every step the nag took.

He held the horse to a brisk walk, heading just east of due north. Not only did he want further opportunity to read Arthur, but he wanted to gauge the reaction of Emmett's Creek to the presence of an agent, openly recognized or not.

A three-pace wide tributary of the Creek the town was named for ran right by Leon's ranch house, and over the years it had channeled itself deeper and deeper into the soft earth of its banks. This year had been a dry one; now a rider could splash the miles along this smaller stream almost up to Leon's doorstep without being seen by anyone more than twenty paces or so from its banks.

Leon would likely be out with one of the herds and its crew, so his wife would have to send one of their sons to bring him in – unless Arthur chose to ride out after Leon himself, which wasn't likely, in Merlin's opinion – which meant that even with having to travel the winding curves of the stream, Merlin could expect to reach the ranch house in time to eavesdrop on the rancher's conversation with the agent.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Freya thought to herself, she should've brought breakfast with the bandages, up to Merlin's room. That, or watch what she said to him more carefully.

The family usually breakfasted in the kitchen together; a simple affair, unless they had overnight guests. Uther's agent didn't exactly qualify, and was seated at the small corner table beside Gwen, pink with pleasure at having caught his notice.

Time and again Merlin had slipped out before the family was awake or at least ready to eat, when he slept there, and occasionally had passed through to grab a heel of bread and a cup of coffee when he'd come into town from sleeping the night outdoors, but this morning Freya had hoped he might eat with them.

Why had she asked that question?

She sat on the edge of her ladder-backed chair in the corner beside Shasta, letting the conversation wash around her, her ears listening for the sound of Merlin's boots on the stairs. He couldn't be that far behind her.

But Shasta was picking up Freya's dish before she even realized Gwen and Percy had also risen, the meal finished. Either Merlin had stayed in his room, or had left through the front door of the common room without a sound. And without anything to eat. After last night.

For once Freya kept her seat, feeling too exhausted to help clean up.

The agent eyed her, and bent to retrieve a scrap of rag from the hearth, lifting the coffee pot from its warming place to refill his cup. He gestured to hers politely, but when she shook her head, he replaced the pot on the hearth.

"So you are Padlow's wife?" he said, his tone low, so the other three would not hear them over the noise of the kitchen. "You know of the record book?"

Ah. The record book. Her mistake, mentioning that. Or – maybe not a mistake, maybe it had been the right thing to do? Should she keep silent, loyally holding her husband's probably illegal secrets? No, by law she was required to answer this man's questions honestly – a lie to an agent was a lie to Uther himself, a punishable offense. And it was right to abide by her country's laws.

A thought jumped into her mind – maybe this was the reason Merlin hated Padlow so much. Maybe he had cheated him in his taxes, and others had suffered because of the loss, and the lack.

Arthur raised his eyebrows, and she sighed. She'd known it would come to this when she'd first learned of the stranger's identity. Arthur already knew the answers to his two questions, and looked at her with the same disgust that all the others did – only more faintly, with curiosity rather than animosity, as he had looked at her when he'd come into the tavern. When he'd ridden into town.

Now she faced the interrogation she'd feared ever since the first uncertainty of her husband's honesty had snuck into her mind.

But the agent followed his first two questions with one that was unexpected. "Did Merlin ever tell you why he's hunting Padlow?"

"He hates him," she said slowly. Were taxes enough to hate anyone over? Emmett's Creek evidently believed so.

"He never told you why?

She shook her head. "I guessed maybe he thought Padlow cheated him collecting taxes?"

"Not him. His father. So he believes." Arthur watched her over the rim of his cup as he took a swallow of coffee.

"Oh." Freya opened her mouth, then shut it again, confused. Of course there had to be more to it. Any number of farmers around town felt the same way, but none had sent their sons after Padlow. But Merlin had first become a revenger – how had that happened?

"My name is Arthur," he said. "You know I'm one of Uther's agents." There was a sharpness in his blue eyes as he toyed with his half-full cup on the tabletop; she didn't know what he saw in her face now, but he nodded, and reached his hand across to her.

She took his hand briefly. "Yes."

"First I heard about it was my assignment," the agent continued. "Go bring an orphaned boy back to Camelot for Uther's service. When I got to Ealdor I stopped by the reeve to get directions to the farm; he was the one who sent the message about Merlin. He took me to see the undertaker, first –"

Freya raised her hand to stop him. "If I hear it, I want it to be from him," she said. "It doesn't – feel right, otherwise." Undertaker? Orphan? That might explain the pain in his eyes, and maybe the nightmares… Ealdor wasn't that far, after all, from her hometown, maybe two days walking distance from Redwillow. And Merlin had been in Uther's service, then. It was not such a leap to imagine him becoming a revenger after that, especially if he had training in the cadet corps.

"I saw the way you looked at him when we rode in yesterday," the agent said, watching her keenly, lifting his cup to his mouth again. "So did Burton. Your husband's partner."

She frowned, but didn't say anything, feeling her color rise a little. How had she looked at Merlin? She'd been glad to see him back, surely, but… anyway, the agent's words had been observation only, not question. He settled back, hooking an elbow over the back of the chair.

"It seems your husband's been dishonest in his tax collecting," he said. "And that might be the least of his offenses, if stories are true."

Freya glanced around the kitchen; Shasta and Gwen were occupied with their regular morning tasks, as well as hers, and Percy had left the room. "I –" she said, and stopped, troubled. Confused. "Padlow doesn't talk to me much," she said. "I don't know many people in Emmett's Creek, either, and –"

Arthur smiled, a quick there-and-gone-again smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm not interested in gossip or hearsay," he said. "I'm interested in facts and sworn statements. The fact is, that little record book of your husband's doesn't match the records the agents have taken when your husband brings the taxes to Camelot. Not by a long shot. We know those are accurate; I'm here to find out how accurate Padlow's private records are. I understand it's awkward for you to talk about your own husband, so I won't ask it of you now. But I also wanted to warn you to keep clear of Burton, and to let me know as soon as you do, when Padlow returns."

"For my safety, or so I don't betray your case?" Freya said, and could've bitten her tongue at how caustic the question sounded.

But the agent only grinned. "Both. Not that I think you'd betray me, not on purpose." The smile flattened, turned calculating. "You've got more spirit and backbone than you first appear to. And I think your feelings lean more toward Merlin than you realize. But Gaius tells me you have a habit of telling the truth, even when others might consider it an inappropriate time."

"No – there's no feelings," Freya stammered. "I mean to say – I'm married. But you know that, unless you're suggesting –"

He cut her off. "I didn't say you were in love with him, girl. Heaven knows what any woman would see in that stubborn, tight-wound sonuva –" he coughed apologetically. "A better word would be – sympathies. By all reports, your husband has a dark side – just _how_ dark, is my job to discover. Not that Merlin doesn't have a dark side as well…" His lips twitched ironically at that; she wondered why. "Most of us do. But if I'm right, you're hoping that it never comes down to choosing between them, yes?"

She was silent. She felt – pale. Maybe even transparent. She knew she had a soft spot where Merlin was concerned, he so very obviously needed… someone. But – she should talk to Gaius, maybe. Figure out how to right her feelings again.

Agent Arthur stood, retrieving his hat from its place hung over the corner of his ladder-backed chair. "I may have more questions for you later, but for now… good day to you," he said, pleasantly enough, but she barely heard him, barely noticed when he thanked Shasta for breakfast and left the kitchen. Shasta and Gwen were both shooting glances at her, wondering, no doubt, what had been said.

_What am I supposed to do now?_ She sighed and pushed herself up from the table. Talking to Gaius would have to wait until after she'd heated the water and gathered the family's clothes for laundry.

Freya's arms were beginning to tire of scrubbing article after article of clothing across the washboard, when Shasta stepped out of the kitchen door behind the tavern. She tossed out a dishpan full of dirty water that only a week earlier would have been poured carefully along the rows in her vegetable garden.

"It'll be time for the last picking, soon," the older woman observed. "In a couple of days."

Freya pushed a lock of sweaty hair away from her forehead with the inside of her elbow; anything closer to her fingers was coated in laundry suds. Shasta tilted the dripping dishpan against the kitchen door and settled herself down on the back step, watching Freya. Her eyes were unusually sharp; Freya kept scrubbing.

"We've never known him to lose a fight," Shasta said eventually. Freya didn't have to ask who she meant. "Percy told me, his wrists were tied." She paused, then asked, "Did he tell you who did it?"

Freya made a face. "Burton."

"Ah." Shasta nodded, picking at the end of the long red braid that hung over her shoulder. "That surprises me. I'd not have put money on Burton in that fight." She watched Freya squeeze water out of one of Percy's shirts and drop it on top of the basket full of wet clothes. "Did he say if he was going to let it go, losing a fight?"

Freya shrugged, a wry smile tugging at her lips. "He didn't say," she said. "But what do _you_ think?"

Shasta chuckled, slapping her hands lightly on her knees. "Ah's me. Reminds me of Percy when he was young, this one does. Percy had a temper like lightning, he did, and his fists were the thunder."

"Percy?" Freya said incredulously. Percy was big, sure, and not at all hesitant about stopping a brawl in his place, himself, if he had to, but she had always thought him as mild and patient as Gaius.

Shasta nodded; the sharp look was still there. "A wild boy will sometimes make the best husband. Once they fall in love with you, there's no safer place to be than with a man who's not afraid to use his fists."

Freya felt a hot, faintly embarrassed flush spread through her. Suddenly she was not sure they were still talking about Percy. And though Padlow had surely been a wild boy once, there was never any hint that he was in love with her, even when he had married her. Shasta answered her questioning look with a nod and a small knowing smile.

"You know I'm married," Freya protested.

Shasta heaved herself up, came to take Freya's place at the washtub, pointed her to start pinning the wet clothes to the line stretched from a pole to a hook on the corner of the tavern wall about head height.

"You're the only one who acts like it," she said tartly. "Never catch Padlow telling folks he's married, or caring about being faithful to you, or even treating you decent like a fellow should treat his wife. Now, you catch _his_ eye –" she held up the next garment, significantly Merlin's shirt – "he could keep you safe from the likes of your _husband_." The last word fairly dripped with scorn.

Freya was glad of an excuse to turn her back to the big woman. Her face felt bright red. "It doesn't matter what Padlow says or does. He took me as his wife, so I –"

"I've been a wife a number of years, too," Shasta interrupted. "And believe me when I tell you that he –"

"Shasta, please!" Freya was close to tears, it made it hard to hang the wet clothes on the twine of the clothesline when she couldn't see properly. "I really don't want to talk about this!"

Shasta clucked her tongue, but with her back turned, Freya could not tell if her expression was one of sympathy or exasperation. "Girl, you best go talk to Gaius, as an educated man. See which one of us is right for once and for all."

It was an old argument, one that made Freya regret telling the older woman how Padlow had married her. Shasta had been trying to persuade Freya to leave him off and on since the first time he left her alone in Emmett's Creek and she had dragged herself into town bruised and half-starving, looking to work for some food and shelter, because he had not left her any money for replenishing supplies or transportation to and from town, and Burton would not leave her alone. That first time, she had believed – or convinced herself – that Padlow, unused to being married, had forgotten to make provision for her while he was gone. She had learned better since then, had learned that Padlow had no intention of letting her get anywhere close to his money, had no interest in taking care of her.

"I can't," Freya said automatically, as she always did. "I couldn't talk to a man about – that." She pinned the last pair of trousers to the line, and slowly returned to the washtub, where Shasta scrubbed energetically, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up reddened arms to the elbows.

"You're just going to wait til Merlin kills Padlow, then consider yourself a widow?" Shasta said.

Freya's breath seemed to stop, heavy in her chest, and she struggled for a moment to catch it up again. "Kills Padlow?" she said. "What do you mean?"

"Ah, Freya." Shasta sighed, leaning on the washboard and shaking her head. "You really believe that one followed Padlow all the way here and near killed himself doing it, just to scrap with him? You really believe Padlow would take a beating and learn his lesson, and go on without coming back at Merlin?"

"I thought –" Freya said breathlessly, "well, he brought the agent back from Camelot, so… I thought he'd arrest him, maybe…"

Shasta gave her a look that was equal parts affection and incredulity. "Doubt it," she said succinctly. "That one came here for blood. For blood, and death. He's carrying it around in his eyes, can't you see it?"

"I – I –" Freya stopped. She'd seen the hate in Merlin's eyes, sure – but was it _murderous_ hate? "Shasta, do you mind if I go talk to Gaius after all?"

"Go on." Shasta jerked her head in the direction of the physician's office. "Gwen need more to do this morning anyway." She smiled to take any sting out of her words. "She gets used to having less to do while you're here." She gave Freya a wink and began scrubbing at the laundry again.

**A/N: I'm leaving town tomorrow for about ten days – family funeral…**


	9. Over a Barrel

**Chapter 9: Over a Barrel**

Merlin looped the nag's reins to a root jutting out from the bank, a hundred yards and around a bend from Leon's ranch house, left his broad-brimmed hat hooked over the saddle-horn and continued on foot after stopping to scoop a drink from the creek. Unless Arthur had galloped most of the way from Emmett's Creek and left again before Merlin was even close, he would have seen him in his few halts to peer above the creek bank – which didn't flow so far from the dirt track that he couldn't make out a rider, even with the dust being well settled with last night's rain – so it stood to reason he was still ahead of the agent.

There were no ranch hands in sight when Merlin reached the point in the creek bed nearest the house, where Leon had smoothed steps into the bank for his wife's ease in drawing water. There was the barn, and the house, though, a two-level board house with shutters hooked back from the glass windows and a wraparound porch – no telling if any eyes would find him if he broke cover to approach. There were three unbroken young colts in a corral between Merlin and the barn, however, and only Leon's wife and two young boys were likely to be around the house.

He was still lying flat-bellied against the earthen stairs in the creek bank when a rider appeared on the track from town, rounding the far side of the barn. The two little boys dashed into view from behind the house, followed by the black-and-brown farm dog, and one man sauntered out from the open barn door, too thin to be mistaken for the more muscular ranch owner, even at this distance. Leon's wife came out on the porch from the kitchen door, facing the corral. She was wiping her hands on her apron and looking toward Arthur. And away from Merlin.

There'd never be a better chance than this. He pushed himself up from the creek bank, casually but not wasting time, and moved to the opposite corner of the house, putting its bulk between him and Arthur, who would surely attract everyone else's attention. The only one he thought at all likely to see him would be Arthur himself, and Merlin hoped that he'd be taken for another ranch hand about his chores. He was still too far to distinguish features or dress.

Reaching the porch, he removed his boots and ghosted along the wall, stopping to peer in the windows. Even if Leon had been home, he could be expected to have risen from his place already to see about an approaching guest. Merlin found the room Leon used for an office, with a large polished desk and two tall bookshelves, a large iron safe in the corner, not quite concealed by the cloth draped over it or disguised by the houseplant sunning itself on the top. Two large armchairs flanked a circular braided rug fully four paces across in the middle of the floor. This would be the room where Leon would bring Arthur.

The window was already open; Merlin crouched not quite beneath it, his back to the wall, and settled in to wait. His body still ached like one immense bruise, but the ribs only sent quick arrows of pain through him when he stretched or pulled.

A bigger concern was tonight. He could skip sleeping – he'd done that before often enough – to avoid the dreams that would come if he wasn't exhausted enough. But even if he remained active all night, scouting the by-now familiar ins and outs of the two and farms, fields, orchards, and ranges, the silence and loneliness and darkness would inevitably draw him into thinking, something he would avoid almost as much as dreaming. Especially after his conversation with –

A door slammed somewhere in the house behind him, and he heard a man's boots thudding into the hall, followed by the softer shuffling of a woman's house slippers.

"Just finished pulling a loaf of bread from the oven," Leon's wife said, her voice carrying through the study and out the window to Merlin's ears. "You can sit down in there, and I'll bring you a couple of slices with some of our own butter, and some tea."

Arthur's voice, then, thanking her. The boot-steps came into the room, muffled as he reached the braided rug.

Merlin remained still. Even if the agent decided to stand at the window instead of seating himself in an armchair, it would be highly unusual for him to crane his neck to the side and press his face into the glass to peer down at Merlin's position. Far more likely he'd look straight out into the distance, at the herd of broad white cattle on the hill across the creek, moving slowly, cropping what little dry grass there was left after the scant summer moisture, some lying in the shade of scrub trees like lopsided dumplings in cold yellowish gravy. Not very interesting. Wouldn't be long before Arthur turned his attention back to the room – bookshelves, maybe.

"Here you are," Leon's wife said, returning. "Fresh-baked, like I said." Merlin relaxed a little; Arthur would now be turning back from the window for sure.

"Thank you," Arthur said. Slight clatter of tin tray on wooden desktop. "Smells good."

"You're not from around here, are you?" the woman asked, and Merlin grinned slightly. Leon's wife was one of those women who lived for gossip; he expected she'd give as much or more information than Arthur could get from the rancher.

"No, just on the move," Arthur replied. "I'm looking for a job. Met a man who said I might find work here. Padlow was his name." The silent moments stretched tension noticeable even to Merlin outside the window.

"Friend of yours?" the woman said, her voice cooled considerably.

"No. Just another man thirsty at the same time and place as I was," Arthur said; Merlin recognized his attempt to put her back at her ease. "Why? If he lied – I came a long way for nothing."

"You might find work in the Creek," the woman conceded. "But if Leon don't hire you, I wouldn't tell anyone else that you talked to Padlow. He ain't exactly well-liked around here."

"Oh?" The agent's voice held the right note of curiosity. This was all the invitation Leon's wife needed.

"He collects taxes from Emmett's Creek folk," she said. "Ain't a one of us doesn't believe he's a cheating, lying thief."

"Taxes are high?"

Again an opening as wide as a barn door. She snorted. "Way too high, mister. He taxes almost every last blest cent from everyone. Can't nobody make a decent profit in this town; you ask my husband if you don't believe it from me. And if you don't pay him what he wants…" She paused significantly.

"What?"

"Things – happen." Another pause, this time more hesitant. "Early on, Leon tried to go against him, trying to call his bluff. Trying to get other folk in town to refuse to pay, too. Only it weren't no bluff, and our barn got burned to the ground, and –"

"Lida," a lower masculine voice chided. Leon had only been into town, and Percy's place, half a dozen times in the months since Merlin's arrival, but he recognized the rancher's voice. Even, and careful. "Spreading rumors?"

"More than rumors," his wife grumbled, not quite under her breath. "As you well know." She had more to say, but she said it on her way out of the room, and Merlin couldn't make any of it out.

"I apologize if my wife offended you," the rancher said to Arthur. "My name's Leon. I understand you're here about a job?"

"In a way." Merlin could hear the quiet smile in Arthur's voice. He also heard the rustle of paper that would be the writ coming out of Arthur's wallet. "I'm Arthur. I'm here on Uther's business."

"An agent?" The big leather chair behind the desk squeaked slightly as Leon settled in.

"Yes. It's come to my attention that the honesty of your regional tax farmer is being questioned. I need to know what you know of that."

Leon hummed. "It's about time. That bad apple has been souring our barrel too long."

"What do you mean?"

Slight pause. "Agent Arthur, do you know many honest men?"

"I know a few."

"Well, let's stretch it a little, and say you've got a whole town of honest men, more or less, keeping each other honest. Now you bring someone along who hasn't got an honest bone in him, someone who can pick a man's pocket clean and there's nothing an honest man can do about it. Then you have your local lawman start taking a little extra from the folk who want a good word put in so this one won't strip them bare, and you have your local lawman taking straight from the rotten apple, too, to turn a blind eye to his violent ways of collecting. Then you've got a third, who never learned right or wrong, willing to take a club to man, woman or child, willing to burn down buildings and poison livestock, getting paid by this one who's out to get as much as he can."

"I see," Arthur said.

"Not quite, you don't," Leon responded, not unkindly. "You let this barrel of apples sit too long, you get the rest of the honest town turning. Some betraying their neighbors so this one will go easy on them, and most trying to lie to him and everyone else about almost everything – how bad harvest was, how many calves are stillborn, even down to how many hens aren't laying. Keep every cent you can for yourself."

"You're speaking of Padlow. And Burton and Reeve Whatley?"

"I'm not speaking of anyone," the rancher returned mildly. "Just discussing the state of a barrel of apples."

Outside the window, Merlin grinned. Everyone hated Padlow, but everyone feared him as well, and none would brave the reeve and Burton in his absence. Unless they believed that Arthur would take action before any retaliation could harm them, and could best the three of them without a doubt, it wasn't likely they'd put their mark to a statement any more specific than Leon's.

The next day, Merlin was still moving stiffly, but he knew the pain would fade more quickly than if he rested – and then there might be dreams.

Elyan didn't say much, which wasn't unusual for him, Merlin knew from observation.

"Wear this," the blacksmith told Merlin tersely when he noticed him lounging in the doorway. He tossed a battered and scorched leather apron to him, to protect his clothes from the forge's flying spark and soot; he wore a similar one himself.

Over the course of that day, by various bits of sentences jerked from the taciturn blacksmith, Merlin learned that Kendall, the apprentice/attendant, had learned enough to be trusted with simple repairs at the second anvil, with his own tools – old hammers and tongs that Elyan no longer used. Merlin, however, though he was strong and willing and a quick learner, was directed to each task by a nod and a grunt, and Elyan's sharp eye was never off him long. Merlin's lip twisted wryly; he figured Elyan didn't trust him, not many of the townspeople would. But it was work, and it was pay, even if he fetched and carried and drew water and pumped bellows til he was breathless from the pain in his side, soaked in sweat, and singed from the fires.

He already knew how to shoe a horse adequately, having learned that much from his father on the farm, but when he tossed a casual question out, Elyan answered, "Farrier's two streets over, at the other end of town."

In spite of this, they were requested to shoe two horses that week – one had a broken shoe-nail and the other had a worn shoe – emergency cases. Elyan let Merlin take care of them and didn't hover, but grunted each time when he finished. Not much escaped the smith's eye in his own forge, Merlin guessed.

Mostly Elyan kept Merlin too busy for his attention to wander – which he appreciated – or for him to be able to notice much beyond the open doors of the forge, which he rather regretted. Not much of a loss, though, Emmett's Creek was small and the majority of daily life was repetitive. He caught fleeting glimpses of wagons lumbering by, a boy darting into the street after a stray ball, Shasta or Freya sweeping the sidewalk that also served as a porch in front of the tavern.

Not that he was watching for her, at all.

But the forge was directly across the street, almost, much closer and with a better line of sight than Gaius' roof. From these brief glimpses Merlin refined his general idea of the daytime chore schedule at the tavern. After he'd grown accustomed to the rhythm of Elyan's work, he found that his stray glances outdoors often coincided with Freya coming out or going in, basket on arm or broom in hand, or just sitting on the porch watching the town life in the street, hands busy with needlework. It was as if his head and neck, sensing her in view, moved of their own accord.

It puzzled him, and it angered him. If Freya had ever noticed his glances, she would have been sure to wonder at his immediate scowl. No, Merlin was sure that Freya wasn't lingering to catch his attention; she wasn't one to shirk her duties to indulge in a flirtation inappropriate for her as a married woman.

But as days passed, and then weeks, Merlin found it harder to think of her as Padlow's wife. From what he'd learned of the man, he was Freya's exact opposite. Merlin could find no point of similarity at all. Padlow was a murderer and thief; Freya was quiet, sweet, and kind.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Shasta had taken Freya's plea not to discuss their disagreement to heart, but the older woman often shot her meaningful looks, or clucked her tongue and grumbled under her breath, and Freya didn't have to ask what she was thinking.

One thing Freya didn't mention to anyone was her resolve to keep her distance from Merlin. She wasn't sure if Shasta's suggestive comments about the revenger stemmed from her own conduct or not, but she was determined to be no more solicitous of him than anyone else – than of Arthur, say.

That was easy enough to do. The agent asked for more than Merlin ever had, was more talkative, and spent more time in the tavern's front room. He treated her politely, respectfully, but distantly, too, which suited her. It felt awkward to try to talk to him, knowing he was secretly investigating her husband for crimes she'd never heard of, and didn't want to know about. It seemed to her that he would be weighing each word she spoke for evidence, so she kept her comments to the agent to a minimum.

But as Arthur became known to more and more of Emmett's Creek, ostensibly searching for work and asking questions, their respect for him and his mission – which many were aware of and yet no one mentioned – the hope was growing that he would effect a change, and the curious scrutiny of himself and his habits translated into the slightest lessening of hostility toward Freya. Those who had hated openly now ignored her, and those who had ignored her now occasionally favored her with stiff and uncomfortable condescension. She couldn't decide if this was to be considered an improvement, or not.

All except Burton and Reeve Whatley. There was something in the air of Emmett's Creek, everyone could sense it. Something that had to do with the two strangers who had ridden in together from Camelot, but who both professed not to know the other. Whatever it was, Freya guessed that the people could sense a line being drawn.

It made Burton more quarrelsome than usual, Freya thought, and Percy even threatened to escort him from the premises more than once – but both of those times were when Merlin was absent. Burton ought to have been out hunting, maybe scouting his trapping lines, or whatever it was that he did when he left town, but he was never out of sight for more than a day at a time.

Freya wondered if he was waiting for Padlow's arrival, and didn't want to risk being gone when that happened.

Reeve Whatley was nervous and belligerent, as though sensing the people were beginning to question or resist his position and authority, and so kept closer company with Burton than usual. If the revenger had been looking to retaliate for that late-night beating, he'd had no opportunity to do it away from the eyes of the law, and Freya knew that Merlin wouldn't want to spend a week or two in jail by starting a fight with Burton while the reeve was near.

It was like the subtle and almost imperceptible ripening of a field of wheat. There was less fear in the townspeople toward the two, a bit more courage. It was like a crack in the dam.

It gave Freya hope for the future of Emmett's Creek, but it made her afraid as well. Her own position was so precarious here, depending entirely on the goodwill of a few.

Autumn cooled, the air brisk, the sky overcast. The leaves had all turned and were falling, and the tang of cider presses in the orchards was faint in the air. Housewives were busy morning, noon, and night, preparing the produce of the region for storage and use during winter months, preparing clothing and bedding for their households, racing against the season's first snowfall.

Freya finished drying the breakfast dishes, before taking the broom to the front sidewalk; the last of the season's rain had been falling all week, and only now was the mud on the boardwalk dry enough to sweep. Shasta and Gwen were in the kitchen busy with the day's canning project, and Percy had taken himself out to the wood pile.

She closed her eyes to sniff the coolness of the air, and untied her scarf to run her fingers through her hair, which had grown to her shoulders. Still not long enough to braid – Padlow had seen to that when he'd sliced her braid in a fit of anger before leaving earlier that spring, but Shasta had done a good job of trimming it neatly, and the curl was more pronounced with the longer length. Maybe she could even tie it back with a ribbon… if she had a ribbon. She tucked it once again underneath her scarf.

The clang-clang-thud of hammer on anvil rolled through the familiar sounds of wagon wheels on hardened dirt roads, shouts of drivers at mothers, mothers at children, and children at play. She could hear Percy chopping firewood, and noted when the rhythmic noises ceased. There was no fear for her this morning, no angry mutters in the jumble of noises. She smiled for the sheer pleasure of being alive, a pleasure that was rare for her to feel. She began to hum; the straw bristles of her broom scratched over the rough boards of the walkway.

She had just passed the doorway of the tavern when the door squeaked open and Shasta ambled out, red and damp from canning – beans, Freya thought. The older woman leaned against the lintel and watched Freya for a moment.

"Gwen and I will be busy all day, finishing the beans and starting the peaches," Shasta said. "Percy said he'd take you along this afternoon to Mal's orchard if you'd like. You can pick the barrels we lay in for the winter."

Freya's smile grew. "Really, Shasta?" she said. "You trust me to do that?"

"You know good cider," Shasta allowed. "Or at least you should by now." The corners of Shasta's mouth turned up into her plump cheeks, before she ducked back into the tavern, leaving the door open to the cool breeze.

Freya swept her way to the end of the sidewalk, humming again. The past gave her bad dreams, sometimes, the future brought more nervous apprehension than hope, but she had learned to enjoy a good day for what it was. And who knew? Perhaps changes would come from the visit of Agent Arthur, and odds were even that those changes would be for the better.

As she jammed the straws of the broom against the base of the upright post supporting the porch roof, in an attempt to remove the dirt collected there, she glanced up and across the street, down toward the dry-goods store.

Her heart faltered an uneasy beat. Reeve Whatley prowled slowly down the opposite sidewalk, walking stick swinging, his gaze intent on her. She felt herself flushing; he turned to scan the street deliberately, as if making sure no one was taking notice of him. Or of Freya, maybe.

And in that instant, a hand thrust itself into her field of vision from the side, a hand with dirt encrusted in the lines of the palm.

She drew in a startled gasp of breath, then the hand snatched at her dress and yanked her back into the alley between the tavern and the next building. She heard the cloth rip and felt her sleeve pull away from the bodice. The hand slammed her against the side of the tavern, and a body leaned into her from the side, so close and sudden she couldn't immediately recognize who had accosted her so roughly.

But she smelled cheap tobacco, whisky, and the stench of old sweat and dirt, unwashed body, hair, clothing. So she wasn't surprised when it was Burton's voice she heard.

"My, don't we smell pretty, now," he jeered.

"Leave me alone," she gasped, her startlement beginning to roll in her stomach, toward fear. "You know I'm married to Padlow. He'll –"

"Not according to him, you're not," Burton rasped, his other hand wandering down to her hip to bunch her skirt up in his fist. "He said to help myself if I ever had a mind to."

This Freya seriously doubted. Padlow was jealously possessive and even if he had professed indifference to whether or not Burton 'helped himself', would no doubt beat her senseless if anything had ever taken place during his absences. Still, it was the biggest reason Freya spent no time at the cabin alone when Padlow was gone. She pushed against the trapper with the broom and her free hand, swaying him backward for just an instant.

He shoved himself against her more insistently. "No-no, you little slut," he growled. "Me and you are gonna have a good time – and then you're going to tell me all about those two strangers staying with you here." He groped at her skirt again, trying to pull it up while still holding her against the tavern wall with one hand.

In a panic, she craned her neck to see who might be on the street to help if she yelled – and saw only the reeve, hurrying across the street toward them with such a vile, eager grin that her heart rose in her throat with such force that it threatened to choke her.

Only one thought occurred to her – she _must_ break Burton's grip before the reeve reached them, or together they could carry her off into the stand of trees past the tavern outhouse. Percy was probably back inside, and she had no illusions that the reeve would offer any help at all. At least to _her_.

She laid her free hand on the broom's wooden length, twisting it and bringing it up as hard as she could. Her aim was blind, but sufficient. Burton's hands and body fell away from her; he cursed foully and danced a step or two, hands now busy with protecting himself. Reeve Whatley, halfway across the street, began to run.

Freya tumbled around the corner, losing her grip on the broom. Burton, half a step behind her, tripped on it and cursed again.

With her first lungful of air, Freya shouted, "Percy! Shasta! Help me!" She wasn't a screamer like other girls – fright made her gasp air in, not scream out – but her heart, still in her throat, added an odd note to her voice. She was seized with the conviction that she had not made her words loud enough for anyone to hear, had in fact only whispered them, so she tried again, "Percy! Shasta!"

A sob closed her throat as she clawed for the open doorway, only to be pulled violently backward. She stumbled off the sidewalk into the street, her whirling vision barely registering the fact of several people stopping to stare.

"What's the meaning of this!" Reeve Whatley hollered, his hand fisted in the material of her dress.

The garment, already torn, succumbed further to this manhandling and ripped clear through her collar. Burton limped around the corner just as Percy, then Shasta, appeared in the tavern doorway.

"She attacked me!" Burton blustered. "Hit me with her broom!" He too observed the few townspeople giving their attention to the scene and embellished, "Like she was trying to kill me!"

"Attempted murder!" Whatley declared, the pretended outrage in his voice tinged by satisfaction. He brandished his walking stick. "I'll have to lock you up for that, you slut – you'll want to be pressing charges?" he added to Burton, who nodded vigorously.

"Hold on a minute, there!" Percy protested, coming off the sidewalk.

"No!" Freya found her voice. "He attacked me! He tried to –" She couldn't finish the sentence for the embarrassment.

Reeve Whatley didn't bother to address her counter-accusation. He hauled her around swiftly to meet his open-handed slap, which sent her stumbling to one knee with tears in her eyes and a ringing in her ears. And just as swiftly he yanked her away from Percy's outstretched hand.

"No, you don't, Percy," he smiled. "She's in the hands of the law, now."

"Don't be so stupid!" Percy said. "Any fool could see there isn't any truth to the claim of a little girl like this trying to beat on a hulking mean man like him for no reason."

Burton began to sputter indignantly, but was interrupted by the sound of swift hoofbeats approaching down the street. Freya had never been so glad to see the agent, though the reeve didn't know he was one. Arthur on his light brown gelding reined to a stop and dismounted in one fluid movement; he smiled without warmth, taking in the three men and Freya with torn dress and burning cheek.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Arthur said.

"I'm arresting this girl for attempted murder," the reeve said belligerently, "not that it's any business of yours."

"She attacked me," Burton muttered, not meeting the agent's keen gaze.

"No," Freya denied, her words coming out in a sob, "no!"

"That's ridiculous," Percy proclaimed. "_He_ probably grabbed _her_ – he's always trying to do that when he's been drinking."

"Well, Reeve, you seem to be suffering from a lack of evidence," Arthur said smoothly. "And your character witness sides with the girl. Why don't you let her go?"

Freya felt Whatley's grip on her wrist tighten maliciously. It was obvious that he was looking for a way to resolve the issue and keep his dignity and authority intact – and it seemed he couldn't do that if he dragged Freya to the jail in front of half a dozen people.

"_This_ time," he allowed sulkily, releasing her with such roughness that Percy had to use both hands in catching her to keep her from sprawling flat in the road. "And _you_," he added to Arthur with a momentary return of bravado, "if you intend on spending any more time in Emmett's Creek, don't you forget – don't start any trouble."

Arthur's expression didn't change, but Freya found herself glad that she wasn't standing in the reeve's boots.

As Whatley and Burton moved off down the street and Arthur watched them, hands on his hips, Percy helped Freya back to the porch of the tavern. Shasta met them there, taking Freya's slimmer frame in her strong arms – but her gaze was directed over Freya's head, straight across the street instead of turned slightly to focus on Arthur or the two other men grumbling together as they headed for the jail. And an odd smile played over her face.

Freya tried to turn to see what Shasta was smiling at, but the older woman gently maneuvered her inside.

"Come on, dearie," she said to Freya. "Let's get you something else to wear, and a nice hot cup of tea."

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

The first hint Merlin had of trouble was the odd, high-pitched cry for help, coming as it did just as he stepped to plunge the red-hot horseshoe into the cooling barrel of water. It rose with the hiss of steam, "Percy! Shasta! Help me!"

He didn't immediately recognize the voice, but the call for help was so very out of the ordinary that his grip on the tongs slackened momentarily as he raised his head to glance out the open doors toward the street, and the horseshoe hit the bottom of the barrel with a thump.

The first detail to register was Freya's bare shoulder poking through her torn sleeve.

Then the fact of Burton's presence, stumbling toward her as she reached for the tavern door – there was such desperation in her movement, in her second call for help from her friends, that he moved without thought to the door of the forge. There was a feeling of fierce eagerness at the thought of facing Burton again, on his own two feet with his hands free to wreak all kinds of damage.

Elyan the blacksmith hadn't entered his mind at all, so the tree-limb arm thudding into his chest with enough force to make him draw breath again yanked his eyes from the scene in the street. Instinctively he stepped back from the arm and its owner, catching the thick wrist in his free hand, twisting to pull whoever had accosted him off-balance. It was like pulling on a branch, there wasn't much give, but when his eyes met the shiny black gaze of the blacksmith, he stopped and released Elyan's arm.

"The reeve will handle it," Elyan said, jerked his head to where that individual was laying hands on Freya.

At that, Merlin took two more steps forward, bringing the tongs up, grip changed to hold it as a weapon rather than a tool. As he'd been taught, he weighed his options with lightning speed, and killing the reeve – because he'd be jailed for starting the fight if he left Whatley alive – seemed a good choice at the moment; he thought he could accomplish it easily with a single blow of the heavy iron tongs. Maybe two blows. Then he'd have it out with Burton –

Elyan reacted almost as fast, grabbing the bib of Merlin's borrowed leather apron and swinging his shorter but solidly muscular form in front of him. His dark skin was shiny with sweat.

"It's no affair of yours," he grunted. "I said I wouldn't put up with your scrapping when I took you on, and I meant it."

Percy stepped forward into the street and Merlin relaxed the slightest bit, enough to stay his first instinct to lay the tongs into its owner. He let his eyes drop to Elyan's face once again, and the blacksmith's eyes narrowed.

"You want to take me on first, have at it," he growled. "I'll teach you to think twice next time, I will."

Merlin's lips twisted. Unafraid as he was of any man or any bodily pain, he found himself believing Elyan's determination and respecting him. He glanced up to continue monitoring the situation in the street before making the decision to tangle with the blacksmith or not – just as Arthur rode into view. The agent dismounted and addressed the reeve, but they were too far to hear the words exchanged. Merlin waited the outcome, and within moments Whatley had released Freya, however ungently, and Percy was walking her back to the tavern.

And he noticed that Shasta, waiting on the porch, was watching _him_, her expression knowing and slightly amused.

Tongs still upright, he deliberately reversed his grip to the proper smith's hold, and raised his eyebrows at Elyan, who stepped back. "Good enough," was all the blacksmith said, before returning to his own work, but as Merlin bent to fish the unfinished horseshoe from the water barrel, he heard the other mutter quietly, "Fightingest devil I ever saw."

Merlin ignored him. He could afford to wait for another chance at Padlow's accomplices.

All that night in the tavern, Freya never once left the kitchen. Shasta and Gwen did what serving there was – Gwen without her usual flirtations, saved as they were for the agent. And Shasta shouting out what orders for fresh rounds were ready and demanding that those who'd ordered the drinks or meals come to the bar themselves to get them. Many grumbled good-naturedly at Shasta, but none asked after Freya.

Arthur came in shortly after Merlin, and ate the stew of the day at the bar before sitting down to the card game already underway. Merlin didn't expect either the reeve or the trapper to make an appearance, and they didn't. He shrugged and smirked to himself. Plan and scheme as they might, he and Arthur were more than a match for their wits, and Percy and Leon and a number of others were likely to be ready to step in if serious trouble started. The balance of power was slowly shifting.

Blacksmithing was harder and hotter work than laying shingles, and while Merlin hadn't dreamed at all since the night Burton had ambushed him, he liked the feeling of being sure his sleep would be unbroken, due to physical fatigue. He knew the land, and he knew the people. He had countless well-rehearsed plans that he trained for early in the mornings. And Arthur was doing the legal footwork of proving his enemy guilty, deserving of the death that Merlin planned.

Little need, then, to sit up watching and listening and putting pieces together.

Another troublesome thing – Gaius had sown some very persistent seeds of doubt in questioning Merlin about the satisfaction of revenge. It made him question the last few years of his life. The longer he sat up, the more likely it would be that his mind would find these little seeds and begin to consider, to measure their growth. Like weeds, every time he believed he'd ripped them ruthlessly out, his mind would return to find them sprouting again. But like weeds, ignored and unchecked, he was afraid they would soon overwhelm his resolve.

Tonight, he decided, he would seek refuge in sleep – and grimaced to himself at the irony. Scant weeks ago sleep had been the venue for his torture, and now was his solace.

Leaving his dishes on the table in the corner, he took the stairs two at a time to the room he had used since his arrival in Emmett's Creek; he'd used it since Arthur had joined him, rather than the platform.

Merlin had doused his face and hands before eating, but one of the inn's women always made sure the pitcher on his commode was full of clean water at the beginning and end of every day. He had never questioned which one, in case he found himself further indebted to the wife of his enemy. Damn her, why didn't she keep her distance?

He wondered if she'd recovered from the afternoon's ordeal.

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed and I didn't respond in a PM (will try to get to some of that; a chapter is more important, I think), I appreciate each and every one – and especially coming home after Christmas + funeral… smiles all around. Thanks also everyone who sent sympathy, too.**

Aerist: As you didn't sign in, I'm going to write your response here – so glad you've been liking it, as different as it is! The ? of Freya & Padlow will be coming next chapter, but yeah, I'd say your guess is probably accurate. I kind of get the feeling that Merlin doesn't like to talk about himself much, anyway, and this Merlin so much more. But revelations are coming. This is actually a 3-parter, also, and so some of your questions about Merlin as an agent and his training with Gwaine and Morgana will be addressed in part 2… but for now, I'll just explain that an un-fostered orphan (in this a/u) is brought to the capital as kind of a ward of the state – for boys that means cadet training/service.


	10. Nearer the Heart

**Chapter 10: Nearer the Heart**

Footsteps sounded on the stairs outside Merlin's room, heavy and deliberate – but not Percy's, he could hear the big bartender's voice through the floorboards. Not either of the younger girls, and not Arthur – he prepared himself to receive an unwelcome townsman.

But just at the head of the stairs, the intruder wheezed in an unfeminine breath of air, which conversely assured Merlin that it wasn't a man. So his crooked smile greeted Shasta as she appeared at his open door.

"Whew!" she exclaimed again, glancing around his room. "Now I remember why I leave the stair-climbing to the girls."

Merlin wasn't about to interrupt his ablutions for his hostess; he stripped off his shirt and wetted the washing cloth. Lathering it with a bit of cheap yellow soap from the soap-dish, he passed it over his face vigorously, even gave his shaggy hair a little dry-scrubbing. And rinsed the cloth and wiped the suds from his face. And Shasta was still watching, with an odd, amused look.

He finally eyed her back. "Well?" he said. "You didn't climb the stairs to watch me wash."

"Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't," Shasta countered, her grin widening. "You forget – I already know what the rest of you looks like." He grunted, and turned his attention to ridding his upper body of the layers of sweat and smoke he'd gathered at the smithy. "I saw your reaction to what happened this afternoon," Shasta went on. "If Elyan hadn't've stopped you, you'd have bent that tool around Burton, and straightened it again on the reeve."

Merlin shrugged, unconcerned. They all knew his reputation.

Shasta interpreted, "_So what_? he says. Just instinct, maybe. My Percy's got the same instinct. Except he's learned to think it through before he whacks the shire's reeve with something heavy." She chuckled. "No, I think it's something more with you. Something a little nearer the heart."

Merlin's eyes narrowed and he gave her a flat, humorless smile. "Now, Shasta," he said. "You know I haven't got one of those."

She snorted. "Sure you have. Just buried under all that anger." She crossed her plump arms over her midsection, drawing the pink cotton of her dress even tighter. And her eyes were sharp as she studied him. "And I think it's something nearer her heart than she'd like to admit, too."

Merlin reached for the towel to dry himself with. Reeve Whatley had warned him away from the girl the first night he'd come to town. Arthur had initially assumed Freya to be Merlin's chosen woman, and Burton had jealousy believed they'd been – intimate. What _was_ it, that made people jump to this conclusion?

"I've been arguing with myself for some time now, trying to guess was it right for me to tell you," Shasta commented. "But for sure you're not given to gossip…"

"Tell me what?" Merlin said tiredly. He wanted to kick off his boots, but that wasn't polite in front of a lady, however unladylike she might be. Though he was already shirtless, anyway. He slouched down on his cot, shaking water droplets from his hair.

"Something Gaius said awhile back to me and Percy had me watching you pretty close," Shasta said. "He had half a mind to believe you meant harm to our Freya." Merlin snorted, reflecting wryly yet again that the old physician was pretty sharp. "Ever true or not, I don't believe it anymore." Shasta pushed herself upright from the doorway, grabbed his clean shirt off the hook on the wall and flung it at him. "Now you just put that on, and listen without looking at me so hard."

Shasta unsettled and unsure was a novel thing, so Merlin complied wordlessly. What on earth was she leading up to say? Shasta's conversation was usually arrow-like in its speed, brevity, and aim.

"Gotta come at it from the side," she mumbled to herself. "So you understand. Merlin, did you ever have loving parents?"

Short, quick, sharp, and to the heart. Merlin's breath caught at the pain of the question, and he sent her a deadly piercing glare in response.

She back-pedaled swiftly, "All right, then…" He began fastening the buttons of the shirt, and she began again. "My own ma and pa loved each other something fierce, though he hollered plenty and she scolded every chance she got." Shasta lowered herself uninvited to the cot beside him, sighed, and stretched out her feet. Her ankles bulged over the sides of her shoes. "Most folks are like that," she continued. "Love each other and work out how best to treat each other over the years. And teach their children, too, about what it means to be a wife or a husband – good and bad. But you take Freya, now… She's different." Shasta paused a long moment, troubled.

Why did he care what she had to say? He hated Freya, and cared nothing for Shasta either, didn't he? Yet he kept quiet.

"You know, her pa never married her ma. Just had his fun, then up and left when he found out she was in a way to start him a family." Merlin found his inclination was to nod; Freya had implied as much to him, too, during the rainstorm in the woods. "Her ma – mind you," Shasta abruptly turned to stick a plump finger in Merlin's chest, her eyes on the dent she made in the fabric of his shirt and not on his face. "Mind you, I'm not telling it as Freya told me, I'm reading between the lines for you, so to speak. Her ma was that torn up over the whole thing, that she taught Freya strict-like, the first man ever to – to lie with her, had to be her husband. Repeated it, likely as not, every day to her little Freya-girl."

There was silence. Merlin was confused. Freya wasn't loose in any sense of the word, and already married.

"And during all these years of telling her about lying only with a husband, and having missed being married herself, Freya's ma never remembered to mention the wedding." Shasta paused a moment, then added, "Making it all legal-like, you understand."

Scraps of conversation shot randomly through Merlin's mind. Freya saying, _He married me_. And Gaius commenting sadly, _Sometimes you chose who your family is, and sometimes you don't_. He turned slowly to study Shasta's troubled face; she spoke with her gaze on the far wall, not acknowledging him.

"And then her ma passed on, and she paid passenger fare for their tax farmer to take her to her ma's cousin." Shasta sighed. "And that was Padlow."

More scraps flitted by. Freya saying, _I dream of my mother sometimes. She died when I was fourteen years old… Padlow was supposed to take me there. And instead he married me._

A girl could marry at fourteen with a guardian's permission. On her own after her mother's death, Merlin figured the marriage would be marginally legal – arguable both ways. But Freya was no idiot, and he couldn't imagine her at fourteen being much different. She was not blindly in love with a man almost two decades her senior, who mistreated and neglected her – had she ever been? The years could have been harder on her than he'd originally supposed; she could have been a beautiful and irresistible fourteen – yet why would a man mistreat and neglect a beautiful girl who'd somehow agreed to marry him? He realized that Shasta was watching him sideways, had guessed something of what had raced through his mind.

She shook her head and turned her eyes down. "She'd never talk to Gaius about it, just fair dies with embarrassment when I suggest it. And Reeve Whatley's worse than useless." Another long pause. "And I'm only telling you so you won't get Freya mixed up in your quarrel with Padlow. He's that mean and cruel, just takes whatever he wants without caring who he hurts." She heaved another sigh, and now Merlin heard tears in her voice. "When he brought her here, she looked pretty near to what you did your first night. And her eyes were just dead. And she never said a word to me or Percy the whole evening. And Padlow says, _This is my wife_, and laughs. And someone didn't believe him, and he says, _Just ask her. She's gonna cook and clean and let me_-"

Shasta's voiced failed; she shook her head and closed her eyes, drawing in several deep breaths to calm herself.

"Can't say what he said. Ain't right for a man to say what he said, about his own wife."

Merlin thought he heard a faint roaring in his ears above the noise that filtered up from the tavern's front room.

"Me and Percy figure he took her," she said, more quietly, with a quick side glance to see that Merlin understood. "Forced her. Probably rough-like. That one would never pay no mind to her struggling. Maybe even more than once that night. And that poor little girl, already so mixed up about husbands and wives and marrying, can only think of her ma's teaching – the first man you lie with must be your husband. Likely as not, Padlow would've taken her on to her ma's cousin, anyway. She was the one said they were married, she was his wife, and had to stay with him, after that."

Merlin's head was shaking without him intending it; he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the tear that tracked down Shasta's cheek. He rubbed his hands over his head – really it was no worse than stories he'd heard while working for Morgana.

Except that Freya was someone he knew. Her sweet voice echoed once again, in answer to his questions – Burton? _He tries_. Padlow? Her silence. Her blush. Her efforts to be a good wife to a man who'd raped her as a child and had abused her continually ever since, taking advantage of her mistaken decision to stay.

"You've done nothing?" Merlin's voice sounded rough, and trembled with an anger he couldn't quite conceal. "Five years it's been, and you've done nothing?"

He felt the cot shift as she rounded on him. "Try to talk her into leaving every chance I get!" she flashed. "Only it makes her so miserable – and confused – can't quite believe her ma was wrong, can she? And now – if she ain't married to him, what's the word for a woman who lives with a man she ain't married to? I guess she can't quite believe that kind of word would fit her, and I don't blame her. She's done her best to be a good and loyal wife – and I believe that's the truth of it, even if it ain't a legal marriage."

Merlin pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He'd hated Freya, had questioned over and over why she'd married a killer, had even intended to kill her along with her husband – only to find that she was another of his victims, and in her childish confusion, had believed herself attached to him for life.

Gone for good was his plan of torturing Padlow's family to cause him pain. Gone, too, was his inclination of extending mercy to her for leading him to the evidence that could make his revenge legal. Shasta's secret revealed that he was squarely on Freya's side, and had been since before he'd heard Padlow's name, before he'd been plucked from the gutter by Gwaine, Morgana's right-hand man. Before he'd stabbed Arthur in his escape, before he'd returned to a gruesomely silent farmhouse. Before his father had even begun to make claims about unfair taxes and proofs.

Freya had been suffering far longer than he had.

And still she was so sweet and kind. Still she helped her friends more than her keep was worth. Still she tried to do the right thing. And there was no hint of the black shadow that had covered Merlin for all this time, in her eyes.

How did she do it?

He dropped his hands to realize that Shasta had once again fixed a sharp eye on him. "Now that you know what she's been through, I hope I don't have to warn you about hurting her any more," she warned. Paused, then added meaningfully, "Won't hurt her much to consider herself a widow. But her feelings is mixed up, and she's a gentle and trusting sort. Take my meaning?"

Merlin's mouth twisted. "You're telling me, keep my distance from her?"

Her eyes narrowed, but she smiled. "Unless your intentions are something nearer the heart, like I said."

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Freya had never been one to spend much time with a looking-glass, but Gwen's expression of shock the next morning was enough for her to take a glance when her friend held out her little vanity mirror with a whispered, "Looks awful! Does it hurt much?"

She'd generally avoided her reflection even if she wasn't bruised, but one quick look told her that Gwen's reaction wasn't exaggerated. She'd been right to hide in the kitchen all evening, and now intended to spend the rest of the week in there. Almost the whole right side of her face was purple, darker along her cheek and jawbones, lighter in between. And her ear was tender, too.

"Never mind," she told Gwen quietly.

She wore the baggy drab dress she used during the winter months – the one she'd often mended when torn, and washed blood out of on more than one occasion - and took the damaged garment and a sewing kit. And left her scarf on the little bed table they shared, in order that her hair might fall forward to hide her face, if she kept her head down. Gwen gave her a little hug of sympathy and support before they left their sleeping-closet, bending to take responsibility of their chamber-pot.

Shasta was already up, dumping an armful of sheets, blankets, and other articles of clothing out on the back step for washing later. She shook her head over Freya's bruise and tsked gently. "Don't worry about helping with breakfast," Shasta whispered kindly. "Got it started already, and Percy can watch it for a minute." Freya nodded, and seated herself in the chair closest to the fireplace, as Shasta closed the door behind herself and Gwen.

Percy came in with an armload of firewood for the kitchen stove, and his cheery whistle died abruptly into a darker scowl. His burden unloaded into the woodbox, he touched her shoulder and said in his quiet deep voice, "He oughta be shot." He turned away, as the kitchen door swung open, and their two guests entered, boots thudding on the wooden floorboards.

Freya ducked her head over the torn seam and her needle, glancing up to catch Arthur's surprisingly sympathetic smile before he left the kitchen through the back door. The second set of boots stopped.

Knowing it was Merlin, she kept her chin down. Til he reached out his strong, callused hand with scars on the knuckles and the thick rope-burn still visible in his sleeve. Til he touched her chin gently and tipped her face upward. Afraid to meet his eyes, she set her gaze past him on Percy, checking on the breakfast at the cook stove in the corner.

But Merlin's face was still in her line of vision, if not her focus, and she saw his teeth bare, heard his indrawn breath hiss. "I didn't know he hit you," he said in a low voice, and it sounded like an apology.

Which she didn't fully take in, too busy blushing over the realization that he too had witnessed the altercation in the street.

He dropped his hand and turned away, and then she remembered something. "Merlin?" she said, keeping her voice quiet so Percy would not overhear. He stopped and turned toward her, keeping his eyes on the floor so he wouldn't meet her gaze, either. She continued, "Burton said he wanted to ask me questions about you and Arthur." His expression didn't change; she could almost believe he hadn't heard her. "I – thought you should know," she finished lamely.

He nodded once, and left the kitchen. Shasta and Gwen returned to finish cooking breakfast, and Arthur to enjoy the morning meal, but Freya didn't see Merlin again that day.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Shasta, Merlin noticed, kept Freya close, after the incident in the street. And Freya, he noticed, wilted a bit more every day under the resulting loss of freedom.

One evening a couple of weeks after the incident, after Elyan had closed the forge for the night, Merlin casually hitched one leg over the barstool next to the wall just inside the door and behind the gaming table. He nursed a mug of Percy's beer as he watched the place fill up, and waited for Uther's agent. Only a few noticed him, that he wasn't in his customary corner by the stairs, but their notice was momentary, and soon forgotten.

Percy glanced at him a couple of times out of the corner of his eye, alerted by Merlin's change of seating, but asked no questions. Arthur came in less than an hour later, dusty and sweaty but for his face and hands, which he'd already washed outside. He barely acknowledged Merlin, but took the stool next to him.

Shasta pushed her way out of the kitchen backwards, hollering, "Soup's up!" Her cloth-protected arms were full of the kettle, her face as red as her pinned-up hair. Gwen followed with a stack of bowls, smiling immediately at Arthur; Freya was still hiding her fading bruises in the kitchen.

Gwen brought their dinners to Arthur and Merlin at the same time, but was too busy to linger for more than a quick smile at Arthur, receiving a whisper in her ear in return. Arthur started in hungrily on the soup – a thick chicken and vegetable combination – while Merlin stirred his absently with the spoon. But the agent was waiting for him to speak first; he probably knew Merlin would have a reason to sit at the bar instead of his habitual secluded table. Merlin's back was to the wall; neither Burton nor the reeve was in the tavern, yet. The bustle of handing out soup bowls at the other end of the bar would cover their conversation.

"Those two have been asking questions," he said quietly to Arthur. It wasn't really a question; if they hadn't yet, they would start soon. It would be more like, interrogation with threats, but the agent would understand that.

Arthur gave him a sharpish look. "People will say what they have to say," he responded. "I watch my back." A quick knife in a quiet alley would seem to solve the problem if Whatley and Burton were worried about higher law involvement, if they learned about Arthur's agent's writ, but his tone indicated sarcastic disbelief in Merlin's concern for his safety.

Merlin waited a moment longer, sipping at the broth in the spoon. Warning Arthur was not exactly his intention. "I figure they might try for the girl again," he said. He could feel the agent's eyes on him again, but he didn't look up from his bowl.

"Percy and Shasta –" Arthur began, but Merlin cut him off.

"They can't protect her from the reeve," he said. "And he'll back whatever play Burton makes."

Arthur chewed and swallowed two more bites. "You have a suggestion?" he said. "I can't have her tagging along with me, and I don't want to tell the reeve who I am, yet. You work right across the street from her."

Merlin ignored the implications of his last comment. "I figure one of us should take her somewhere safe," he answered. "Away from here."

"Somewhere they don't know about?" Arthur considered, and Merlin wondered if the agent would decide to keep his primary witness close at hand, regardless of her safety.

He'd been keeping an eye on the door, and slid off the stool with bowl and mug in hand, heading for the back corner table without another word or look, his expression giving nothing away. And as he seated himself with his back to the opposite wall, he watched Reeve Whatley in keen glances over the edge of the bowl.

The reeve hesitated at the door to cast his gaze over all assembled there – those who ignored him and those who gave quick uneasy grins – Arthur eating his soup unconcernedly at the bar. His eye rested momentarily on Merlin; he still suspected Arthur and Merlin of collaboration, though they had done nothing overt to confirm it.

Then Shasta, who always behaved as though nothing were outside of normal, shouted, "Reeve! Soup will get cold if you stand there staring!"

Merlin had waited for an opportunity to come, when he wasn't under Elyan's or Arthur's keen gaze, and when the pair of his enemies were separated. He felt he could take either one alone, and possibly both together, but he had a feeling that Arthur would not prevent his arrest as he had prevented Freya's.

But that opportunity had not come. And the two had made no further moves against any of the tavern folk.

Arthur had spoken with most of the residents in and around Emmett's Creek by late autumn, and was spending more and more of the afternoons and evenings in his room, compiling his findings and composing a report. Trying, Merlin guessed, to decide what to do about the situation. He wouldn't – couldn't, really – make a move until the tax farmer returned, unless he elected to simply return to Camelot and leave the decision and actions to his superiors. Which he couldn't do without leaving Merlin behind – a condition of the agreement for Merlin to surrender to him was that the vendetta against Padlow had to be resolved one way or another, first.

Merlin expected that Burton or Reeve Whatley would contrive to warn Padlow of the situation before he or Arthur could confront him, but as far as they knew, both men still believed Arthur and Merlin to be fellow criminals trying to steal the position of tax farmer for the region, or simply rob them of gathered profits. Padlow was not the sort of man to give up this business to competitors without a fight – he'd proven that when he'd killed Merlin's family to silence his father's accusations – so there would be a confrontation, likely a fight. It was inevitable, almost.

Two days after Merlin's conversation with Arthur, he saw Percy hand Freya a handy little knife with a dainty wrist sheath over breakfast preparations.

Arthur hadn't yet discussed his thoughts and plans with Merlin, even though Merlin assumed the agent would need his help enforcing his judgment, when the time came. But Merlin hadn't spoken to Arthur about his intentions, either.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

About a fortnight after Reeve Whatley had hit her, Freya risked another look in Gwen's vanity mirror, and was relieved to see only a slight greenish tinge along her cheekbone, barely noticeable unless she really searched for it.

She tied her hair back in her scarf and went early to the kitchen to help start breakfast, surprising Percy and Shasta in discussion with Agent Arthur. She would have passed without another thought; Percy and Arthur wore the slightly bored expression of making small talk about the weather, or horses – but Shasta blushed guiltily on seeing her, and wouldn't meet her eyes. So her feet slowed and stopped and she waited, her heart sinking through her stomach.

"What is it?" she asked, somewhat fearfully. If they were discussing something that concerned her, it probably wasn't good.

The agent muttered something like, "Better if it comes from you," and set his coffee mug half-finished on the table as he stood. He nodded to her and smiled politely as he passed her on his way out of the kitchen, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. He looked preoccupied, but that wasn't out of the ordinary for him, lately. When he'd gone, she turned back to Percy and Shasta, wrapping her arms around her middle.

"The bruise is about cleared up," Percy commented. Shasta smiled encouragingly.

"Yes," Freya said, waiting for the metaphorical axe to drop.

"What Burton did was bold, coming after you like he did," Percy continued. Freya nodded – she'd been more watchful, more careful… "Seems you haven't taken well to staying indoors, though," he added.

Freya considered. Autumn had always been her favorite time of year, the brisk chill welcome after summer's heat, all the harvest gathered snugly into barns and cellars, ranches and farms alike battening down cozily for the lasting snows, frost on the ground in the morning and a few flakes occasionally in the air. In spite of the fact that for the last four years autumn had also meant the return of Padlow.

But it would only last a couple more weeks before getting too cold for much unnecessary time to be spent out-of-doors, and snow could fall any day now, and Padlow would be coming home… and expect to find his hut warm and clean and ready for him. And her there waiting. She shuddered involuntarily.

"How long do you think it will be – first snowfall?" she asked Percy. Would the agent make his arrests – if that was his intention – before Padlow came? As soon as he arrived? Would it even be worthwhile for her to ready the hut? But what would happen if she hadn't, and it was required?

Percy glanced uneasily at Shasta, who made a face at him before turning to Freya and coming closer.

"You see, the agent wants to arrest all three of them, but isn't so sure he can manage it," Shasta said. "He'd have Merlin's help, sure enough, but odds are it'll get ugly. Probably a good idea for you to lay low til it's over, you know?" She continued without allowing Freya a chance to answer. "He also wants you to go along with him when he leaves the Creek, to tell the judge and whoever else what you know about – about Padlow."

Freya's head was shaking on its own. "I don't think I should do that," she said uncertainly. "After all, he's my husband…" she stammered to a stop.

Shasta put her palms out in a shushing motion. "Well, Percy and me were thinking, maybe you should go to some of my relations, somewhere the agent won't know where to find you, so he can't make you do what you don't want to do."

Freya's knees felt shaky, and with a glance behind to make sure she wasn't going to tumble to the floor, she sank into one of the kitchen chairs. "This is really happening," she mumbled, laying her forehead into her hand.

Padlow would be coming back – essentially into an ambush. Oh, she was sure the agent would be fair and just, and she could admit objectively that if there were truth in the rumors, grounds to the hatred often deflected onto her by association, then Padlow deserved to be punished. Not to mention Burton… and what of the reeve?

" 'Fraid so, my dear," Shasta said kindly, bending over her.

"I don't want to – run away," Freya said. "I want to do the right thing. But… Do you mind if I take some time this morning to go talk to Gaius?"

The older couple exchanged glances. "I should stay here to help Gwen clean, myself," Shasta hedged. "Percy, you got some time to go with her?"

"Percy doesn't need to come with me," Freya started to argue, but Percy held up one big hand to silence her.

"Merlin and the agent both figure Burton or the reeve will try to talk to you again," he said in his deep voice. "And you know how gentle they'll be." His gaze shifted significantly to the fading bruise. "Agent Arthur doesn't want anyone standing up to Reeve Whatley just yet, so we'll have to keep an eye out for him, and duck the other way. But Burton can be sneaky, and the agent doesn't want you wandering around town on your own."

_As much in concern for my value as a witness as for my safety_, Freya thought sarcastically. Then corrected herself; she didn't know Arthur's motives, and it wasn't fair of her to make such an ungenerous assumption.

"Don't worry yourself too much," Percy said easily. "One good thing about tavern-keeping, not a lot of seasonal busy-ness. I can take you over to Gaius' office right after breakfast, if you like."

"No, Percy, I'm going to need you to stay here this morning," Shasta changed her mind suddenly. "Got some heavy chores me and Gwen will need your help with."

Freya looked up, astonished to hear her say so, as Merlin moved further into the room. Percy seemed only slightly less astonished, but recovered quickly, shrugging his indifference to his wife's change of his plans.

And Shasta added, "Hey, Merlin, how about walking Freya up to Gaius' office?"

"No," Merlin said shortly without looking at any of them.

Freya said at the same time, "No, Shasta, really I can go alone."

Shasta's plump hands lodged on equally fleshy hips. "A whole streetful watched the reeve hit you, would've watched him haul you off to the jail, and goodness knows what would've happened to you once those two got you off alone. Either walk with Merlin, or you don't set foot outside the tavern. And you –" she jabbed a forefinger at Merlin, whose eyes were a stormy blue though his face was blank. "Girl wants to talk to an educated friend, and you're going to be the one to tell her no?"

Merlin held her gaze for a long moment before he shrugged. "I can walk down to Gaius' office before Elyan needs me this morning." He headed for the back door without waiting for her.

Without considering breakfast either, Freya thought in dismay. Such sacrifices must be made. Her shawl hung on a hook by the door; she snatched it as she hurried to follow Merlin.

He wore only a vest over his shirt, no coat, but the chill wind that swept in fitful gusts up the alley didn't seem to touch him. He ducked his head against the dusty crest of one wave of air, and met her eyes for an instant. She was relieved to see their expression neutral, not angry or impatient.

"Thank you," she said breathlessly. "I hope I won't be too long with Gaius."

He shrugged again. "Kendall's up on crutches," he said, referring to Elyan's helper. "He can give Elyan a hand til I get there."

Freya pulled the shawl closer around her shoulders, shivering in spite of the warm wool as air swirled up inside the bell of her skirt. "Gaius thinks he'll have full use of his leg soon?" A short nod. Merlin's head was up again, eyes roving, never resting in one place more than a single second, keen and watchful. It was a habit with him, she knew, but today his vigilance was in service to _her_. The thought warmed her even as it caused another shiver. "What will you do then?"

He turned his gaze on her, eyes dark and smile flat. "Season's changing," he said, by way of answer. "I guess you know what I came here for."

Freya wanted to stop right there in the alley, cold as it was, and demand that he tell her straight out what he was planning, but she suspected she'd be left behind and unanswered, both. "What is it you think Padlow's guilty of?"

Even in profile, she could see the furious fire light his eyes. His jaw clenched and his stride lengthened. "I don't think. I know," he bit out savagely.

"Percy says Agent Arthur is going to arrest him?" Freya asked, skipping a little to keep up with him. He didn't give a sign that he'd heard her, and she suddenly felt quite lonely, right in the middle of her obligations to her husband, and her desire to please her friends, to take the legally just course.

They arrived at Gaius' office, and Merlin jerked the back door open. She entered, and he started to close it again, between them. She put her hand on the inside panel to stop it, lifted her face so that her eyes were fully open to his scrutiny, and said, "You might as well come in. It's very cold out there."

He shrugged and turned his back to watch the alley and the next row of buildings, placing his hands on his hips. This movement raised the cuffs of his sleeves enough for her to see the thick scars Burton's rope had made.

Which reminded her, and she whispered, "You must find peace," not sure if she intended him to hear or not.

He heard, she knew, because he straightened perceptibly, then turned to face her, his eyes a deep blue, and searching. His eyes, she thought for a fleeting second, could see her soul.

_Does he want_, she wondered, _to see my soul_? "I think it would be a good thing," she said, trying to choose her words carefully, "if you heard my questions to Gaius and his advice to me. I know you and Arthur don't trust me fully, and I don't blame you, my connections being what they are. So I want you to be able to hear what I'm thinking and feeling." Her face was flaming by the time she'd finished; she could feel the heat of her flush pouring down her body.

His face, however, seemed a little paler. "You're sure?" he said only, his voice sounding slightly hoarse.

She nodded. He might suspect her motives and every word she said to Gaius, with him so obviously in attendance and by her invitation, but she hoped he knew her well enough to believe her sincerity, in the end.

He put his hand to the door and followed her inside.

Freya noticed that Merlin's steps were hesitant though it seemed they were alone. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that his expression had hardened into anger as he looked around at the furniture the yellow of new wood, crafted by his own hand, tempered by something new. Not fear – but she couldn't tell what it was. She stifled a stray impulse to reach back for his hand.

"Gaius?" she called out, her voice echoing in the dim light further down the corridor. Only one front window had been installed in the building, and the sun was hidden that morning by high, thin clouds that promised snow. She heard a door open near the end of the hall, and as the old physician emerged, Freya thought again how good it was to see him without a sling.

"Ah, Freya!" he greeted her with a smile. "And Merlin – I haven't seen you _inside_ this office yet."

"Shasta asked him to come with me this morning," Freya explained to Gaius. "For my safety."

The old physician nodded as if he understood the situation completely, which he probably did. "A good idea," he said, raising his voice to address Merlin instead of her. "How do you like your handiwork from underneath?"

The thump of Merlin's boots sounded again on the plank floor; he passed Freya into the hallway and she trailed after him. His chin was turned up, eyes studying the rafters. "No leaks?" he said only.

"Never a one," Gaius replied, glancing at Freya with a smile. He stepped to one side, raising an eyebrow slightly at her as Merlin rounded him to enter his little study at the rear of the building.

Freya shrugged in answer to his unspoken question, fingers twisting in the pattern of the shawl. "You know they're investigating Padlow," she said, referring to Merlin and the agent. "I invited him to sit with us in the interests of being open with them."

Gaius nodded, but his eyes were sad. "So, what's on your mind this morning?" he said, closing the door behind her and seating himself in the chair behind his desk.

Freya took her seat on the bench next to Merlin. With the wall at their backs, Gaius' desk was barely two feet from their knees. Closer to Merlin's, actually, because he slouched with his boots out in front of him, his arms crossed over his vest.

"Percy and Shasta want me to leave town," she began slowly, doing her best to ignore the audience of Merlin. "To go somewhere safe until the agent has time to – to deal with Padlow, and everything is resolved. I think Agent Arthur suggested it. I think he doesn't fully trust me. I don't know what to do – leaving feels like running away, which seems cowardly. But if Agent Arthur feels that I would be in his way, then…"

Gaius nodded, tapping his fingertips together. "It would be safer for you, elsewhere," he commented mildly. "But Shasta has told you that before, hasn't she."

Freya ducked her head, flushing miserably at the reference to the injuries she'd borne at the hands of her husband, some of which Gaius had seen to treat. "I think Percy and Shasta may be trying to protect me from the agent, too," she confided. "I know I haven't done anything wrong, and I guess the agent has been collecting testimonies from people in Emmett's Creek, but Percy and Shasta thought Arthur might want me to go to Camelot – in person."

Beside her, on the bench, she sensed Merlin straighten and turn to look at her. Maybe that was something he hadn't been aware of.

"I don't want to do it," Freya said honestly. Her fingers were twisting in the wool of the shawl again, and she forced them to lie quiet on her lap. "But, I guess… if it's the right thing…" she trailed off, then burst out, "Gaius, I just don't know what the right thing to do is!"

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

The old physician opened his mouth to respond to the girl's desperate statement, but a hoarse shout came from outside the room, the direction of the front door of the office, in Merlin's opinion. Another patient, maybe.

Freya stiffened, and Gaius sent her a quick warning flash of a glance as he rose from his seat. "Excuse me," he said only. "I'll be right back." The physician carefully shut the door behind himself.

It was a small room, the bench on the short side, which meant that Freya sat very close to him. No, not sat. Perched. Like a startled sparrow, every muscle tensed to fly, taking swift little breaths through half-opened mouth, as if straining to hear the exchange in the entryway down the corridor.

Merlin could hear another male voice in conversation with Gaius, but the wall and the distance prevented detection of word or tone. Freya evidently recognized the voice, though, why else should she react so strongly? And she was frightened, which probably meant the intruder was Burton or Reeve Whatley.

It might endanger Gaius if Merlin or Freya showed themselves, but if he unlatched the door and allowed it to swing slightly ajar, he might be able to catch some of the conversation. He stood from the bench and took one long step toward the door, carefully moving his boots around the hem of her skirt.

He'd never seen her move so swiftly or decisively. In one instant she was in front of him, back to the door, hiding the latch with her body.

"I beg you, do not go out there," she said, a palpable strain in her low musical voice. Her eyes were on the top button of his shirt, her face pink all the way to her ears.

He made an impatient sound and tried to nudge her out of the way with the back of his hand against her upper arm. She didn't move. "Open the door just a little, so I can hear," he said as an explanation.

She shook her head. He could see tears shining in her dark eyes. She had no reason to want to prevent him from overhearing Burton or the reeve – was it someone else, then? Even if she was too polite to eavesdrop on another, she would never put herself in his way to stop him, unless…

Realization hit him like the collapse of a burning building – a rush of sparks, flaming heat, dropping down from the crown of his head, burning through his body, down to his feet.

"It's _him_, isn't it?" he heard himself say.

**A/N: Happy New Year, everyone! You're welcome and sorry for the last section's cliffie!**


	11. Killer

**A/N: A housekeeping type of fyi – in the last chapter, I originally wrote Merlin and Freya walking down the main street to Gaius' office, but I've changed that, to them taking the back alley. B/c otherwise they would've noticed Padlow, right.**

**Chapter 11: Killer**

_ "It's him, isn't it?" Merlin said._

Freya wouldn't look at his face, couldn't look.

She could see the fury building in his body, tension mounting, without having to see the exact expression in his eyes. His long gentle fingers clenched into white-knuckled fists; she could barely swallow, her throat was so dry.

Hate radiated once again, white-hot and deadly as the day he'd come to Emmett's Creek, but he was no longer brittle from illness and fatigue. She'd seen him pounding nails on the very roof above their heads, seen him working the bellows of Elyan's forge stripped down to trousers and leather apron. Physically he was more than a match for her husband, she thought.

And she couldn't move. Couldn't let him go to face Padlow.

"Move away from the door," he said. His voice shook slightly; he was fiercely eager in his demand. She fully expected him to toss her aside, knock her to the floor, but she shook her head, feeling tears squeeze onto her cheeks.

"I can't," she gasped quietly. If Padlow should hear them and try to enter the room – she shuddered. "Please, please don't go."

Merlin reached for her shoulders; she tensed for the violent shove, but just as quickly he released her. He turned, growling in his throat like a cornered wolf, paced the floor to the other side of the room, turned swiftly again and was as close to her as thought before she could draw breath. She was startled into looking up into his eyes – a stormy blue sea of emotion ready to sweep her away into their depths.

"Why do you block me?" he said, his voice harsh. "Do you think to protect him?"

She gazed back at him, stiff with sudden shock. Padlow's safety, something that should have been a concern for her as his wife, had not even entered her mind. He'd never been seriously injured; she'd never seen Padlow lying still and unconscious, except when he was drunk. She'd never touched him to wash wounds, never tried to comfort a nightmare, never caught him as he fainted from the end of his ability to endure pain.

"You," she answered, wondering at herself. Stuttered again, "You – you are not a killer. He will not let you survive if you fight with him – you must kill him if you would live. And here – now –" She shook her head, trying to make him understand. "You are not a killer," she pleaded. Trying to swallow the sob building in her throat.

He moved suddenly, startling her again, brought his face and body so close she could smell the soap he used, see the pulse beating in his neck. His eyes bored into hers. "Move," he grated.

"I cannot," she said.

Before she realized what she was doing, she had placed her palm flat on his chest. And he moved back at the gesture, obeying her touch. The realization shivered her, heart and soul.

"I will not help you kill him," she added. "You – you are better than that."

He didn't seem to notice her brokenly incoherent attempt at explanation. "This is not something you can stop," he told her. "If not here and now, then later, and elsewhere." His jaw clenched as he studied her for a moment, then turned to pace restlessly again, a wild thing caged against his will. This tightly strung expectancy was different in him than the almost lazy carelessness she'd grown used to in the past months.

It reminded her of what Shasta had once said, about Merlin wearing himself out following Padlow to kill him. And that prompted another recollection, of Alice saying it was a pity whatever had happened to make Merlin the way he was. Something Arthur knew, too, about why Merlin hated so fiercely.

She'd suggested, when helping to clean the marks on his wrists, that Padlow had wronged him. _Me_? Merlin had said. _No. He's done nothing to _me. Someone close to him, then? Padlow had done – or at least Merlin believed he had done – something so bad, or wrong, or cruel, that Merlin had followed him a long time, had become a revenger, had waited here in Emmett's Creek for months, for the opportunity to settle the score. To exact his revenge in blood. Like Shasta had said, he hadn't come merely to scrap with Padlow.

"What happened?" she said in a low voice, not moving from her post in front of the door.

He wheeled, staring not at her but at the door behind her, which was disconcerting. "I'm going to kill him," he stated simply, his voice trembling with intensity.

Even now, she realized, he was barely holding himself in check. Because she was standing in his way? Easy enough to pass her – except he wasn't willing to hurt her. Even to be rough with her. Beneath the rage and the hatred, he was still instinctively kind. Gentle. She didn't understand.

"But _why_?" she said.

He looked at her again, his blue eyes so dark as to be almost black. "You really want to know what your – husband – is capable of?" he spat out.

She took a deep breath, straightened her spine, and for the first time since the night Padlow had married her, admitted aloud, "I do know what he's capable of."

His eyes narrowed, his gaze glanced down her body, returned to her face. "Almost." The word was spoken in a voice so low she could barely hear him. "Rape? Yes. Torture? How about that? Murder?"

Her heart seemed to stop, to gasp for another beat. _Murder_? she tried to say, but though her lips moved, no sound came out.

"Theft?" he continued. "Extortion? Balinor _knew_ he was a cheat and a liar, knew he was robbing honest, hardworking folk blind. So one day, your – husband – comes to call. To threaten. And when he leaves, four bodies are lying on the kitchen floor."

Freya was bumped forward by the door trying to open. "Just me, child," Gaius' low voice let Freya know it was safe to let the door open. But even if Padlow, Burton, and the reeve had all tried to push in, at that moment she was too numb with shock to have kept her position.

Merlin's burning eyes never left her face, as the physician slipped into the room. "There were flies in the blood when I came home," he continued. "Blood – _everywhere_. Pooled under my father's body from a dozen wounds. Smeared across my sisters' faces where my mother had touched them."

He turned from Freya and Gaius, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, fingers clutched in his hair, his body bending with the weight of his anguish. In a haze of echoing pain, Freya sensed Gaius looking from Merlin to her, in shock himself.

"Always so much blood," Merlin whispered hoarsely. "If I had stayed –" A cry burst from his throat, rising in pitch and intensity. "They were babies – they were _babies_! And he broke their necks like –"

He whirled violently, one long step bringing him close to Freya again. Gaius put his shoulder in front of her as if to protect her, but Merlin ignored him, shoving his finger in her face.

"You asked me once, did I remember my first fight. They took me to them, lying there on the undertaker's table, all white and clean. But I kept seeing the blood – everywhere. I was falling – drowning – couldn't breathe. But if only they hadn't –" Gaius reached forward to lay a comforting hand on Merlin's shoulder – "_Don't touch me_!" he choked, leaping back. His finger curved into claws, trembling visibly. "Why? Why must they always touch me?"

His body folded to the floor beside the bench, his forehead pressed into the wood, eyes closed, hands flattened on the seat to either side of his face. The gulp of breath sounded raw in the silence of the room, and he let out a sob that might have been a harsh laugh.

"I've spent years telling them it wasn't my fault. They don't believe me."

Freya's heart was pounding like she'd just run the length of Main Street. Her mouth was dry, her chest heaved with breathing around the tears. She moved forward, slid onto the bench. "Who?" she said softly.

Gaius remained motionless by the door; tears streamed also down his wrinkled face, though he made no sound.

"My father. My mother. My two baby sisters. If I had been there – if I hadn't – run…"

Freya's hand hovered momentarily over his black hair – did she dare? – then gently, softly, touched him. He shuddered with the depth of his feeling; she smoothed his hair, careful not to press his face into the bench, felt the curve of his head and the tension in his neck. Felt even the wetness of tears on his cheek.

She thought, now, that she knew the origin of his nightmares. Knew why he had reacted to Reeve Whatley's touch with a blow, why he'd slapped Shasta's hand away from helping him, why he'd fought Gaius and Percy so fiercely even half-conscious. She glimpsed the days and months of hurting and hating that had turned into years – how many? How long?

"Will your hate and your pain die with Padlow?" Gaius asked softly.

Merlin's head came up at that, hands made rough by hard work scraping away all trace of moisture from his face. "It will never die," he stated, and his voice had lost the fire of his passion. He remained crouched on the floor, staring blankly at the wall behind Freya, hands bracing himself on the bench.

"Your mother," Freya ventured. "She would not want her son to become a killer."

He turned to look at her, blue eyes ice-stark, but not completely soulless. An inkling arose that he wanted her to understand. "I am next of kin," he said. "It is my responsibility. By law I am allowed to take his life as payment for theirs."

By law, Freya knew, he could also take the lives of the murderer's family as well, since a family had been murdered. She remembered the hate once directed at her…

Gaius winced at Merlin's bald statement. "It might be legal, my boy, but that doesn't mean it's right. That doesn't mean it'll ease that black shadow off your soul…"

Freya felt the tears start to her eyes again. "Please," she whispered. "Please don't do this."

He turned his face away from her.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

After a moment, Merlin pushed himself to his feet. He wished he hadn't lost control and revealed his past, but he couldn't change that now – at least Gaius nor Freya was likely to spread it around town as gossip. If there was any time for that. Deliberately he shut that part of himself and locked it away.

"You better keep her here," he addressed Gaius. "They'll likely be watching the tavern." Gaius nodded, his gray eyes infinitely sad. "Arthur is out at Cedric's place today, but I don't think anyone else knows that. He'll be back tonight – and then we'll see."

"Padlow was asking where Freya was," Gaius offered hesitantly, as though unsure himself what the right thing to do was – though Merlin didn't have to ask if the old man had lied for her. "Also said he knew there were two strangers in town looking for work, wanted to know what I knew about you. Thought it was amusing, you helping to put this roof on – said he might have some odd jobs if you both wanted to come out to his place sometime. I'd guess he's trying to make it look like he believes that story, but he never said a word about Arthur being an agent. That part seems to be still a secret."

Merlin nodded. Likely they were working on the same assumption Burton had revealed the night he and Arthur had ridden into town. The night – she smiled. He glanced down at Freya, and found himself rubbing the rope burn scarred into his left wrist. She wasn't meeting his eyes, was playing with one corner of her old brown shawl. He took Gaius' sleeve, drew him out of the office, glancing quickly down the corridor to be sure they were still alone, and shut the door behind him.

"It's important that she stay hidden," he told the old physician dispassionately. "They think that Arthur and I are trying to blackmail them with the knowledge of their excesses in tax collecting, or to pirate the business for ourselves. They may think that Freya was helping us with information, at the least. They certainly will want to question her; they may want to punish her."

Gaius nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. Then he said, "Padlow would have checked the tavern before coming here. But there's only so many places in town that she could be, and I'd guess that Burton and Reeve Whatley will help him search. He's within his rights to take his wife back home with him, so if he finds her…" He trailed off, a worried frown line between his bushy gray eyebrows.

As much as Merlin ached – with an anxious, almost physical pain – to get his hands on Padlow, he doubted his ability to handle all three on his own. He could wait for Arthur – or ride out to get him from Cedric's farm – but he'd lose his chance of killing Padlow himself, then. Maybe if he called Padlow out in public, where the reeve couldn't interfere, and if Percy or Elyan was present to prevent Burton from making the fight two against one…

"Just make sure she stays here, and do you best to see he doesn't find her," Merlin told Gaius. "Once she's involved, it's far more complicated, and likely she'll be hurt. Someone will come to tell you when it's safe."

He turned to leave, but Gaius caught his arm. The old physician's expression was more intense than Merlin had ever seen. "An agent is here," he said. "The law is involved. He can see to it that justice is done. Why not let go your revenge?"

Merlin felt the influence of the old man's words, but forced a short, incredulous burst of laughter. "Have I not just torn myself open to show you what he's done? Am I not justified in seeking his blood? He or I will die before tomorrow morning." He pulled away roughly, and left the office before the physician's words could start to persuade him.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

For a moment Freya listened to the murmur of Merlin and Gaius talking outside the closed door. She still felt slightly numb.

She remembered her mother, thin and coughing, always coughing, her translucent skin tinged yellow, til the morning she woke to the inevitable silence. She'd gone to a kind-hearted neighbor for help, a woman as angular as Shasta was round, who'd sent for the undertaker and kept Freya drinking tea at her kitchen table til the preparations had been finished. She couldn't begin to imagine what Merlin had seen in the silence of his home, the horror and anguish.

But she could clearly see him sitting at a farm kitchen table with a man who looked exactly as he'd look in twenty-five years, a woman whose eyes smiled as she served chicken and dumplings, and two big-eyed little girls who watched their brother adoringly. She could see Merlin relaxed, pleasantly tired after a profitable day's work, joking with his father, accepting his mother's loving touch unselfconsciously, winking across the table to make his sisters giggle. She could see that warm sideways smile spreading easily and often.

Surely that wasn't gone forever. Surely that family hadn't been destroyed completely. Surely Merlin's kindness and gentleness could still overtake and overthrow the hatred and violence.

She knew he could still smile.

Then Freya heard Merlin's voice raised, clear through the door, "He or I will die before tomorrow morning."

She was on her feet when Gaius returned. The way the physician looked at her pityingly, then shut the door behind himself, told her much. Merlin would not have left her to walk back to the tavern alone; she was supposed to stay here with Gaius. To hide like a child under the quilt until the storm passed.

"We can't let him go," she declared to Gaius. "He'll kill Padlow or die himself. We can't let that happen."

The old man took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The little worried wrinkle was deep between his eyebrows. "What can we do?" he said. "It's out of our hands, now."

"Gaius? Gaius!" came another call from beyond the closed door. The physician peeked out before opening the door to the newcomer – his wife, Alice.

She hurried into Freya's view, flushed and without any extra garment to ward off the cold. "Ah, Freya," she greeted her quickly. "Gaius, I came to tell you first – Padlow is back. He's early. I was just on my way down to the tavern –" She stopped when Gaius began nodding, then noticed that neither of them looked surprised. "He's been here?" she said, her question laced with dread.

"He's been here," Gaius confirmed. "Looking for Freya and asking questions about the two strangers."

Alice tucked her arms together over her chest, at a loss to know what to do. "Well, now it's up to the agent, I guess," she said. "Best thing we can do is keep Freya out of harm's way." She squinted at Freya more closely, her eyes sharp. "Have you seen Merlin this morning?" she asked suddenly. Freya opened her mouth to answer, but Alice's gaze transferred swiftly to her husband. "He's been here too, hasn't he?" she guessed.

"And he finally told us about his family," Gaius sighed. He glanced between the two of them and admitted, "I've known that story for months. Arthur told me on our way back from Camelot."

"The agent?" Alice said, confused. "I didn't know they knew each other, before."

"Oh, they haven't exactly been friendly," Gaius said. "But they'd run across each other before. Merlin was underage, you see, at the time his family was killed, and his reaction to that tragedy meant no one in the community would foster him into their own family. I guess a neighbor found Merlin there in the house with the bodies a few days later, and took him in overnight. But when they went to view his family before the funerals, it seems Merlin went a little mad. Knocked out two of the undertaker's teeth and broke the arm of the neighbor who was caring for him. They had to let him go, but sent word to the authorities, who sent Arthur. Arthur found him out at the farm, trying to work his father's land by himself."

Alice stopped Gaius with a hand on his arm. "I'm not sure what good it does us to know this," she said, troubled. "Maybe you'd better keep the rest to yourself?" She sent Freya a glance, then drew her husband further away, into the back room that might have been a kitchen in a house.

Freya didn't have to hear any more. If Merlin had fought with Agent Arthur then, well, he was working with him now. Somehow he had come to be a revenger, and then – somehow he had learned Padlow was responsible. And had followed him here.

Alice and Gaius were still speaking in low, urgent tones, paying no attention to her.

She had put her hand on Merlin, and he had yielded. Might she not be able to stop blood from being shed? She hadn't laid eyes on her husband yet, but she believed she knew him as well as any – she just hadn't wanted to admit what she knew.

There was violence in Padlow just as in Merlin, but a sneaky violence done in the dark and behind closed doors. Not as Merlin's was a violence proclaimed for all the world to be wary of, that he was not ashamed for, that he openly accepted the consequences for, asking only to be left alone. She couldn't remember anyone ever meeting Padlow in an open fight.

Night after night she'd spent curled into a ball at the edge of the bed where Padlow sprawled and snored. Meals she'd cooked with criticism and no thanks, day after day cleaned the close, dark hut with no acknowledgement of her efforts. She'd fought her feelings and allowed him his marital rights whenever he'd demanded. She'd accepted his roughness in silence and forgiveness, had given him the benefit of the doubt when rumors and hateful looks and invective were thrown her way.

She'd been wrong, hadn't she.

What now? What now?

Her feet strayed slowly down the corridor, her stomach churning at the thought of waiting there, waiting for one or the other to come, depending on who lived and who died. She did not want her husband's death, but her heart bumped hollowly at the thought of Merlin lifeless – eyes glassy blank, face relaxed unnaturally, his active body still and limp. She had no right to think of him at all, she knew that. But the vitality and potential, the promise of the kind of man he could be, the life he could live…

She reached the front door without realizing it. Alice and Gaius had not appeared, locked in their discussion in the back room. She stood a moment in indecision, biting her lip. She knew nothing concrete of anyone's plans – not Merlin's, nor Arthur's, nor Padlow, Burton, or Whatley's. She didn't know what she wanted the outcome of the confrontation to be, had avoided probing her heart for fear of finding selfishness.

But a death was so _final_, a killing so irreversible. And perhaps it was in her power to prevent that, at least.

She pulled the shawl around her, and opened the door slightly to let herself through.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin used the back alleys to make his way from Gaius' office to the tavern, and approached with increasing caution. Eager he might be for the fight-to-the-death, but not stupid. Rushing blindly into it might result in his death, and he was not eager for that to happen.

Not until Padlow was dead, anyway.

All was unusually still for that hour of the morning; he could hear no one stirring about town – no wagons, no shouts of children playing, no noises of trades being plied. The forge was silent. He paused for a moment at the tavern's back kitchen door, scanning the edge of the wooded area visible beyond town. He studied the windows of the other buildings for a moment, eyed the roofs. Morgana had taught suspicion and wariness as a life-saving weapon; his hand caressed the leather-wrapped hilt of the foot-long hunting knife habitually at his belt.

Merlin put his ear to the wind-chilled wood of the door and listened, heard low voices murmuring inside the kitchen. He could detect nothing from the tavern's main room beyond, but another moment assured him that the voices were female only. He pushed inside.

Another time it would have been laughable to see how Shasta and Gwen both jumped and turned identically guilty faces to him. They huddled by the double-hinged door between the kitchen and the tavern's main room much as Merlin had just stood at the back door, heads bent close to hear what they might.

"Where's Freya?" Shasta hissed. Gwen's eyes were wide, her smile gone. Breakfast stood unfinished on the small family table.

Merlin crossed to them with soundless steps. "With Gaius," he whispered back. They moved one to each side to allow him access to the door; he listened but heard nothing in the main room, not even Percy moving about at mundane chores.

"Padlow's back," Gwen whispered from his right. He nodded but didn't pull away from the door.

"He's looking for Freya," Shasta added from his other side. Her wide face was pale. "He mentioned you and Arthur, casual-like. He's been talking to Burton and the reeve. For sure he doesn't believe you're just drifters looking for work, but that's what he tried to make us think. He's down the street loading supplies from Mike's, but we didn't see Burton nor the reeve. Percy's out front, watching."

Merlin eased the door open, stepped out into the deserted common room. Shasta and Gwen followed, the daughter clinging to her mother, but the stopped by the bar while Merlin continued to the window, standing to the left so he could see down the street without being seen himself.

Percy was outside, leaning against the vertical beam supporting the porch roof, towel slapped over one shoulder, big arms crossed bare over his chest, motionless. Past him Merlin noticed Elyan at the open doors of the silent forge, tied into a long leather apron, knuckles at his hips and a hammer dangling from his fingers. Down the street, Merlin could just see a team of tired gray horses facing them, heads level with their knees, hitched to a large wagon waiting outside the dry-goods store. A large canvas, tented upward over a curved frame, covered the back of the wagon and prevented Merlin from seeing more than vague movement beyond, as Mike helped Padlow load his winter supplies.

The thought came to him, that his mother and father had seen this very wagon pull innocently into the dooryard as though bringing another visitor for dinner and a night's lodging, just a peddler with a wagon of trinkets. His mother would have stood at the open kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron, the girls half-behind her skirts on either side… Balinor coming to the door of the barn…

Merlin could afford no emotion now; he needed his thinking to be clear.

His gaze shifted to scan the rooftops; the flat top of the blacksmith's forge could only conceal a man if he lay flat on his face near the back of the building. The next to the east was a boot-maker's, with a slanted shingle roof like Gaius'; the opposite side was shielded from the tavern's view. Mike's Mercantile had a high storefront that rose above the actual roof – a good third of the buildings down the street boasted this feature, to make the establishment appear larger, more impressive, more successful. It was an excellent place for a man to lie in ambush, and had featured prominently in several of Merlin's earliest plans. It was impossible to tell if anyone was there before they popped up and took their first shot at you with the weapon of their choice.

Shasta hissed, "What's going on?"

Merlin didn't answer, just snorted a breath through his nose, half in derision and half in disappointment. Padlow was right there on the street past the wagon, out in the open, waiting to be challenged. But he'd bet hundred to one odds on Burton or Whatley or both lying in wait for him or Arthur to make that mistake. Perhaps the two had more intelligence than he'd guessed, but more likely this course of action revealed Padlow's leadership.

His eyes narrowed. A clever murderer. He still itched and burned like fury to get his hands on the man, to rend and tear and watch life ebb from his damn eyes – but it wasn't going to be simply a matter of calling him out. They could ambush him and call it legal, claiming protection of Padlow's livelihood, and then Arthur would be one against three, even if he showed his writ.

Merlin would have to claim the grievance of his lost family and air his past before the reeve and several witnesses if he wanted even a chance at a fair fight.

He regretted, briefly, that inauspicious meeting of the agent in the Camelot library and Gaius' hastily-agreed-upon treaty. If Arthur hadn't ridden into town, Reeve Whatley and Burton might never have conceived suspicions to pass on to Merlin's quarry, alerting him to possible danger and making him watchful of strangers in town.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Percy straighten, unloose his arms, and form his hands into fists. Craning into the angle of the window, Merlin couldn't see any change in the scene, but was reluctant to step outside and show himself to any watcher. Percy remained tense, brows drawing thunderously together and fists clenching and releasing. He also glanced from rooftop to rooftop; clearly his thoughts ran in the same pattern as Merlin's.

He risked a quick trio of taps on the glass; Percy, startled, turned his head and saw him. Then his eyes went past Merlin to his wife and Gwen, not two paces behind. His gaze turned back toward Padlow's wagon for the space of two breaths before he took the slow steps that brought him inside the tavern.

A last glance out the window told Merlin that Elyan had no similar reaction to whatever had taken place, but still watched, unmoved.

"Tell me," Merlin commanded shortly once the door closed behind Percy.

The big bartender's gaze remained on his wife. "Padlow's back," he answered slowly. Merlin made an impatient sound, motioned with his hand that this was old news, tell more. "He was in a little bit ago, asking after – you and the agent. Didn't tell him anything, but that you were staying on in town awhile, doing odd jobs but looking for more permanent work. Didn't tell him specifics." Percy fell silent then, eyes still on the two women.

Shasta spoke up then. "He made compliments to me and Gwen," she said, and her voice was troubled. "Maybe you've heard somebody do that before – make a compliment sound like a threat."

Merlin had. Along the lines of, _Your daughter is very pretty_. Accompanied by a leer and a thumb testing the edge of a knife. Merlin had a flash of understanding how a single man with few friends could keep an entire town held in fear. He and Burton with no scruples, and a reeve willing to make excuses and turn the other way.

"And just now?" Merlin demanded.

Percy's expression shifted subtly, like he was trying to communicate something to Shasta without words and without Merlin catching on. Her reddish eyebrows drew down in confused reaction, and a hint of fear.

Outside the window, Padlow's tired gray horses pulled the covered wagon along – and Merlin's attention was completely diverted.

This, then, was the man who killed. The last face his terrified little sisters had ever seen, as his big hands gripped the sides of their heads. The last hand his anguished mother had ever felt – she who deserved nothing but joy and light, to teach her daughters cooking and sewing, to hold their babies and die in peace surrounded by love. This was the man his father must have hated with an intense and helpless hatred as his family was slaughtered before his eyes.

The image swam before Merlin's eyes. He felt the thief's knife as it had entered his own body months later, in a rainstorm by the side of a country road, white-hot. He felt his life ebbing away when he could not move, could not even survive to fight another day, to hunt down the man who had taken his family.

There had been no Morgana to stop her carriage beside the farmhouse, as beside the rain-filled ditch, to order that the bleeding bodies be retrieved from the blood-spattered kitchen, to bind the wounds.

There had been no obedient teenage son gathering firewood or stabling horses to burst in and help overcome the murderer in time. There had been no one to save his father's life.

And now there was only him.

Merlin blinked deliberately. With steely resolve he forced the tears from his vision. Stared with burning eyes at the murderer.

He was tall, Merlin could tell by the way his knees drew up as he sat the wagon's driver's seat. His bones were heavy, his joints thick, his hands massive. His jaw was square, his hair dark and longish, turning a greasy gray above his ears. His eyes were dark and sunken, flitting to and fro, though his head never turned, lips pulled back over long teeth – he was missing one on the left – in a grin at once triumphant and uneasy. As though he'd won a battle but the outcome of the war was still in question. A long hunting knife in a fringed scabbard hung at his hip.

Then the wagon passed the tavern, continued on the track out of town, heading presumably for the miserable hovel Freya had referred to as their home. Merlin could see nothing but the corner of a crate through the tight-drawn canvas at the back of the wagon, an evil and furtive eye watching the killer's back.

What would such a man want with the profit he squeezed from the taxpayers of his region? What would he do with it? What had he done with it?

Merlin moved to the other side of the window to watch the wagon grow smaller and finally disappear behind the rise of the hill. Percy remained with his back to the door, listening but not looking. He seemed ashamed, somehow.

"Well?" Merlin said, his mind more focused on the wagon and its driver than the tavern-keeper's narrative. "Finish it."

"You left Freya with Gaius?" Percy said.

"Yes." Merlin was impatient.

"She didn't stay there."

…**..*…..**

Guest: Well, pieces are starting to fall – into place, mmm not so sure. Here's Padlow for you, and I'm glad you like Shasta, she's one of my favorite oc's – sometimes the 'older' characters are great at pointing stuff out to the younger main characters, aren't they?


	12. Circling

**Chapter 12: Circling**

Freya gasped with the chill of the wind that cut effortlessly through her shawl.

But it wasn't the temperature of the air only that bothered her; the whole town seemed to be holding its breath, watching the street through wary window-eyes. No one was about, the street seemingly deserted but for Padlow's covered wagon outside Mike's store, not quite directly across the street.

It was the same every year when Padlow returned. The last stop before Emmett's Creek was Uther's storehouse in Camelot, where the tax farmer would sell for hard money the surplus crops given him for tax on the territory's last route. He'd also sell what crafts had been given him in payment – jewelry, linens, lace, quilts, various carpentered odds and ends, even a piece or two of larger furniture – to the artisans whose booths and shops filled the capital. And he'd bring the money back to Emmett's Creek, buy what was needed for the two of them to last the winter. It would be a quick stop at Mike's; since Padlow paid cash, there was no need to haggle over the value of trade items. Mike wouldn't prolong the encounter, and might even have had the staples waiting for Padlow already.

She didn't want her husband to see her outside Gaius' office; she didn't know what the old physician had told him, but she didn't want to arouse Padlow's temper against her friend. She started toward the wagon, glancing up and down the street yet seeing no one. Where was Merlin? She'd imagined he'd charge right out and pick his fight immediately.

Padlow slouched through the door of the dry-goods store, carrying an open crate of sealed glass jars, followed by Mike with a forty-pound sack of flour. Her husband hadn't changed a bit; his perpetual sneer was in place, his shifty pinpoint eyes still on the constant move. The sneer widened when he saw her, the eyes darted to make sure she was alone.

Mike avoided looking at her, hefted the flour into the back of the wagon and hurried to re-enter his store; the old blind dog was huddled under the board walkway, whining thinly.

She approached reluctantly, trying to watch for Merlin without looking like she was doing it; Padlow dumped the crate onto the wagon bed with a clatter of glass jars.

"Well, there y'are," he greeted her. His eyes were narrow, unreadable. "I hear a lot's been going on this year while I been gone."

Apprehensions tumbled through her like a litter of porcupines. What had he heard, exactly? She shrugged, trying to stay calm. "Not so much," she answered.

He was buying three or four months' worth of foodstock as he usually did; she figured he expected to return to their hut for the winter. What he'd heard hadn't changed his plans, apparently. He would expect to take her as well. But what choice did she have?

_Run_! her instinct screamed. Percy was at the tavern, would protect her. He would have kept her safe from Padlow these years if she'd asked – but she'd never asked him, not to risk Shasta and the tavern, also. She took a step back.

Padlow's tough, rope-muscle arm snaked out and grabbed her elbow, squeezed like he would grind her joint in half. "Get in the wagon," he hissed, pulling her forward.

Her hip slammed into the loose-swinging back gate, and her lips felt stiff. "My clothes," she managed a protest. "I want to thank Percy and Shasta –"

"You get in the wagon or I'll hogtie you and pile this stuff on top of you," Padlow threatened, forcing her arm and shoulder upward like he would physically shove her where he wanted her.

Countless times she'd obeyed when she hadn't wanted to, countless times she had submitted to his rough handling to prevent worse occurring. This year she felt a curious reluctance, a lethargy upon her limbs that slowed her response – was it selfishness, or was the warning whisper in her ear something more? It sounded like Merlin – and was that a kind of selfishness,too? Questions tumbled through her mind like gamers' dice, over and over – what should she do?

But one thing she knew – Padlow would do as he threatened, and it would be worse for her when they reached the hut. She turned silently and lifted herself into the wagon; Padlow slapped her backside hard, like he would in hurrying a mule.

Tears of humiliation started to her eyes as she clambered over the crates and bundles already loaded, to find a seat on a small keg of cider. Her heart warned her she had made a mistake, but she could see no alternative that wouldn't end with violence.

Supplies loaded, Padlow lifted and secured the wide plank that served as a back gate for the wagon, and yanked the cords of the canvas tight, so only a small inverted teardrop of daylight remained. His boots sounded on the packed dirt of the street as he rounded the wagon to climb to the drivers' seat.

She wiped her face with the corner of her shawl. She would not allow herself to think of Merlin, or even the agent, would not hope for a change to be effected. It could be weeks til the agent decided to make his move, and it was possible he'd change his mind entirely. Merlin could be killed himself, or arrested – at the very least, he would be furious with her; she couldn't expect his help if she'd disregarded his advice of caution. The best thing would be to prepare her mind and heart for another season of silent endurance, and allow no hope.

Ah, but winter was so long and cold.

The wagon wobbled and bounced as Padlow climbed aboard and slouched into his seat. He kicked the brake loose and hee-ya'd the old gray horses. They lurched forward; Freya could see very little through the small opening, around her husband's back.

She glimpsed Elyan at the open doorway of the smith's forge before the view held only the bare skeletons of treetops, stretching and clawing at the sky. She turned to peer out the small window left by the tied canvas at the back; Elyan had already re-entered his forge. There was no one to be seen at the tavern.

"Might snow later," Pdlow observed, glancing at her over his shoulder. "You crying?" He sounded malevolently gleeful at the possibility.

"The wind is cold," Freya said wearily. "My eyes are watering."

"Soon be plenty for you to cry about," Padlow muttered darkly.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin's heart dropped at Percy's words. "What do you mean?" he said. Shasta paled; Gwen looked from one to the other uneasily.

"Guess she left the physician's office," Percy said. "Just saw her cross the street."

Merlin's head snapped swiftly around of its own accord, even knowing the wagon was already out of sight. He should have known Padlow wouldn't drive out of town leaving her behind.

"Padlow – sort of – took her arm, and was talking to her," Percy continued, speaking to his wife as though framing an apology. "Guess she got in the back of the wagon, then."

Her safety was in danger, if not her life. He had no clue how Arthur was planning to accomplish his arrests, but Merlin's own situation had changed only slightly. Freya was with Padlow, heading for the dim little hovel, but the whereabouts of Burton and the reeve were still unknown to him. As long as that remained the case, he'd be risking himself and the success of the venture if he tried to take Freya from Padlow by force. They could be hidden here in town, watching for him; they could be hidden in the wooded area around Padlow's hut, waiting for him or both of them to ride in unsuspecting – that invitation about seeing Padlow about various odd jobs was surely not genuine.

Arthur was by no means untouchable, either, even if his three enemies became aware of the agent's writ. It wouldn't save him if there were no witnesses – maybe not even if there were.

The door pushed open, and Percy stepped to the side to admit Gaius and Alice, both out of breath and red-faced from the wind, though the wife wore what looked like her husband's coat. Gaius began to apologize to Merlin, but Alice said, on top of the physician's words, "She must've slipped out the moment we weren't looking."

"Why would she go to him?" Gwen said to Shasta, who answered only with a confused and worried frown.

"She said to me she wanted to keep Merlin from – from doing something he might have regretted later on," Gaius offered. "Maybe she expected to find him on the street, and found Padlow instead."

Merlin shook his head, jaw clenching. He turned and headed for the stairs as the others began arguing over what should be done, and took them two at a time. He swiped his saddlebags and canteen out from under the bed, checking to see that his extra blades and the far-seeing glass were still there, then stuffed them full to bulging with extra shirts and one blanket, and filled the canteen from the clean water in the pitcher. His long wool-lined coat hung on a peg just inside the door; he grabbed it also and returned to the common room in seconds, pulling the coat on as he went.

"Send someone for Arthur," he said tersely. "He should be at Cedric's place, if he's not somewhere between here and there. Tell him Padlow's back, and has taken Freya home. Tell him I've gone after them." Well, indirectly.

Percy nodded, still not quite meeting his eyes, but Merlin was sure the bartender would make sure it was done.

Gaius said, "No, Merlin, wait a moment –" Merlin yanked the door open, strode across the hard-packed street.

Folk were beginning to stir again through the town, to come out, to talk in tight, tense clusters or hurry on into other establishments. If Whatley or Burton had eyes on him, he didn't want to betray alarm or heightened caution. Or hurry. They were expecting him to rush recklessly into confrontation, betting on the truth of Burton's accusations, maybe, and he had to assume they'd prepare accordingly.

He had to get outside their plans, make them relax and forget the threat of his presence – then he would strike. This also he'd learned from Morgana – once the quarry is aware of the hunt, you must make them believe you've lost their scent or have given up and turned back to home. And with Arthur's return to town, there would be two of them to worry about and keep an eye on; it would be doubly difficult and would at the very least cause them to split up, maybe even make mistakes without each other to check with.

Merlin crossed to the stable next to Elyan's forge, at the end of the street, and saddled the old nag himself, swinging the saddlebags up behind the saddle and fastening them. Once outside, he turned the nag's head back into town, in the direction opposite that taken by Padlow, and allowed the nag to choose its own speed. He could gather no indication, either from sidelong glance or the intuitive neck-hair-raising feeling, that anyone was still watching from a rooftop.

On the other hand, unless Burton and Whatley had both retreated to follow the wagon back to Padlow's hovel to prepare for a siege, there would be at least one of them here in town, and placed where the tavern and forge – the likeliest places for Merlin to be these days – would be in sight.

He passed Gaius' office.

They'd expect Arthur to be ranging the countryside as he'd done every day for weeks, now, ostensibly still in search of a job; it would be a waste of time for them to try to track him down. He couldn't make up his mind whether it was a good thing that he and Freya had walked the back alley to the physician's office, or not.

Like most of the buildings lining the main street, the reeve's office – twin holding cells in back – had one large front window to allow anyone inside a good view of the street and town activities at a glance. The jail was too far down from the tavern to be able to see much from the window, though, and Padlow's wagon would have further obscured the line of sight, while parked outside Mike's. But Padlow's wagon was gone, now.

Merlin's keen gaze was alert to the jail more than to any other building, and detected a single dark-clothed figure slip around the corner and disappear through the door. That fleeting instant was enough for Merlin to identify the reeve – Burton was bulkier, slower, clumsier, and in any case there was little chance of mistaking that red shirt. So the reeve, wherever he'd been stationed previously, was now in the jail. Presumably he'd seen Merlin the minute he left the tavern, and now watched him ride slowly down the street.

He took note of the mousy brown gelding tethered to the post outside the reeve's office, and the slicker laid over the saddle horn. As he passed the jail, Merlin kept his eyes fixed forward as though oblivious to the watching reeve within. He kept his grim smile hidden as well.

Reeve Whatley would see him alone, riding slowly out of town but away from Padlow's destination, dressed to spend any amount of time in the weather. The saddlebags bulged full, which could mean he was supplied to be on his own for many days in preparation for a trip – or not. The saddlebags could be packed with just about anything.

Let the reeve make of that what he could.

Merlin pressed the nag to a slightly brisker walk once out of town, and held the pace nearly a league. Either someone would follow to keep eyes on him, or no one would, which would mean his actions were free of anyone's knowledge once more.

Rein in the impatience. Control. Make haste slowly.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

It was a good hour's drive to their hut, along a winding track full of dead brown weeds and fallen leaves. Freya tried not to think, not to worry, but when Padlow drew the team to a halt and set the brake, her heart started hammering in quicker beats.

"Get a fire going," Padlow ordered her, jumping down and stepping forward to tend the horses. "Then start unloading some of this stuff. You should've been ready when I got back, but you weren't. Now you're going to have to pay the price, and work twice as hard."

Freya obeyed.

There was firewood and kindling left in the woodbox next to the stone fireplace, from what she hadn't used when Padlow left that spring and she'd moved back to town. The hut had remained dry – at least, there didn't seem to be any indication that the roof had leaked – so she soon had kindling lit and the small flames licking at two larger sections propped above it. The chimney was relatively clear, too, she was relieved to note; not much smoke drifted into the one-room dwelling.

She crouched on her heels by the hearth for a moment, surveying the ugly familiar surroundings, despair threatening. The dingy and often-patched quilt on the dusty husk mattress, the rough-hewn table and twine-bound chairs that both tottered on the uneven plank floor. This year it seemed harder than ever to leave the cheer and companionship of Percy's Place to return here, and not wallow in self-pity and doubt.

Freya finally rose and lit the kerosene lamp on the mantel – it was noonish, but the sky was overcast and the hut windowless, and Padlow would be angry if she left the door open and allowed the heat to escape.

"Gal! Get out here!" Padlow shouted.

The wagon had been pulled to the side of the hut, the horses stabled behind. Her husband was pulling the canvas back from the wagon's frame; the hatch-door to the underground cellar yawned open beside the it. Fallen leaves drifted dryly into the hole.

"You been getting lazy staying in town," Padlow remarked brusquely. "Guess you'd better remember how to work today." She tied the ends of her shawl behind her back and went to the wagon to begin unloading. "And don't drop none of it, neither!" he hollered.

It was tricky, maneuvering heavy boxes, sacks, and casks down the steep crumbling earthen steps into the dimness of the cramped underground space. After folding and stowing the canvas under the drivers' seat, Padlow came to sit on the back of the wagon and kick his boot-heels on the hanging back-gate, watching her work. He took a pipe from his jacket pocket but chewed the stem unlit.

"Everything just like I left it?" he questioned, jerking a short dirty thumb toward the hut.

"I guess so," she answered softly, not pausing in her work. "I don't know if Burton stayed here or not."

"He ever catch up with you?" Padlow then asked. It was a question posed every fall upon his return – she'd never had to answer in the affirmative, thank goodness – but she was sure that the wrong answer would earn her the beating of her life, and maybe not even a mention of the occurrence to his partner.

"No," she whispered. Her shoulder ached from balancing the forty pounds of flour down the ladder, but she didn't rub it. Not where he could see her action and curse or punish her weakness.

"Burton said the journal's gone," Padlow observed. His tone was uncharacteristically bland, which put her immediately on guard. "What do you know about that?"

"Nothing, Padlow," she answered truthfully, somewhat confused by the change of subject. Then a swift memory rushed through her – a rainy afternoon, a platform built into a tree, Merlin's inscrutable blue eyes as he questioned her. Had she mentioned the journal? A more recent memory – Agent Arthur saying…

One thing she'd never been good at was hiding her thoughts.

"Liar!" he snarled, seeing her expression. He pushed himself off the wagon, his face twisted in anger and jealous. "Reeve Whatley himself saw the journal in one of the stranger's saddlebags – how did it get there?"

She retreated from him. She could hazard a guess – in fact understood pretty well now, why Merlin had gone to Camelot when he had, right after that conversation – but, "I don't know," she said, opting for strict honesty.

"Burton said you and the young stranger are getting pretty cozy," Padlow continued, his advance backing her toward the hut. "Burton thinks you been bunking up regular with him, that you plan to sell us out and take up with him permanent-like."

"No, I haven't," Freya gasped. The rough bark of the log wall thudded into her back, catching at the fabric of her shawl.

"You're gonna tell me everything, aren't you?" he said, sauntering into her and leaning his hips into her body. He grabbed her face tightly between his two hands; the unlit pipe gouged into her cheek but she didn't dare pull away. "You're gonna tell me everything I wanna know about both them strangers – who they talk to, what they talk about." He pulled her head forward, then clunked it hard against the log behind with each phrase, increasing in force until tears stood in her eyes. He grinned, showing decaying teeth. "You're gonna tell me all about their plans to take the business. And then you're gonna tell me everything I need to know to get them both out of the way quiet-like."

Any remaining doubts she'd clung to that Merlin might have been mistaken now crumbled.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

No one followed.

Merlin left the road, heeling the nag to a stiff jog to cut through several orchards and the stubble of two harvested fields, heading back to the north. There was a stand of trees a couple of miles out of town where he'd be closer to Padlow's hut, and be able to see both ends of the main road through Emmett's Creek, with the aid of the glass in his saddlebags. He could also leave the nag there and continue on foot, if he so decided. He saw no one else as he rode, but the frenetic pace of the autumn work had died down with the approaching winter.

Cedric's farm was smaller than average for the region, but he also kept several dozen hogs in two low-lying buildings with attached mud-pens that spread over a couple of acres. It lay a good three leagues to the southeast of town, so whoever was sent to find Arthur might well spend the rest of the day doing it.

Reaching his destination, Merlin dismounted and let the nag crop whatever late-autumn grass it desired. Then he stationed himself by one tall cottonwood and unfolded the glass. From that height, he could look down onto the roofs of the buildings on the north side of town, a hodgepodge garden of squares edged by the main-street storefronts. He could even catch glimpses of the road between buildings. The newer shingles of Gaius' roof glowed golden among the weathered gray of the other shingled roofs.

His blood trembled through his veins, his breath hissed through his teeth. _Hurry. Freya. _

_Can't_, he told himself. _Impatience will get us both killed_. She had value to the murderer, after all - there would be questions for her. It was her choice to answer truthfully or not, quickly or slowly, but she wasn't stupid. He forced himself back into the revenger's mindset drilled into him by Morgana, beaten into him on the training field by Gwaine.

Since he hadn't been followed, Merlin gathered that the saddled gelding outside the reeve's office was ready for another purpose – reporting to Padlow, most likely. Whatley would have had sufficient opportunity from the time Merlin left town to ride the comparatively short distance to Padlow's hut; there was no point in Merlin hurrying there while the reeve remained.

Merlin continued scrutinizing the town – the roofs, the alleys, and especially the east and west roads winding outward. There wasn't much to see – the dirt roads, hard-packed after summer heat and fall rain, raised no dust. The folk he saw going about their business were ordinary, unremarkable. Smoke rose from most of the chimneys; a dusting of snow began to fall, to catch and collect along the ground in withered grass and weeds, atop fence rails.

More would fall, Merlin knew, and more heavily as well.

He let the glass drop, and for a moment considered. His revenge was so close he could feel it, but he could not afford to indulge in daydreams. There would be plenty of time to release emotion when the fight was drawn, when his quarry lay helplessly waiting for the final blow. Thoughts of Freya nudged him, but he refused to wonder how she fared from one moment to the next. The memories of pain incurred in past fights whispered to him of the possibilities she might be suffering, but he deliberately put away from him those images of similar punishment for her.

He was helping as swiftly as he was able. To accomplish it successfully, caution was vital. His stomach told him it was close to noon, and he took a mouthful or two of water from the canteen, for the basic reason of keeping his body fit to fight.

And waited.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

A voice hailed from outside the cabin; Freya was immediately grateful to the owner for the reprieve, however brief. She was dizzy from Padlow's blows, her clothes had been torn twice, and blood dripped from her nose at least, probably her lip as well. Padlow paused with fist pulled back when the call came, then shoved her roughly back onto the bed.

"Don't move, you hear?" he warned, and slammed the door as he went outside to confront the intruder.

She heard him say the reeve's name, and some of the tension eased from her. Not Merlin, then. Not yet. Her arms shuddered under her weight, and she pushed herself awkwardly up to sitting, bracing herself with one hand on the rumpled quilt of the bed and one of the rough log wall.

The room tilted and drifted slightly to the left; she closed her eyes and focused on breathing. Tears trickled their way through the drying blood on her face, dripping unwiped from her chin.

Padlow had never thought twice about a kick, a shove, a casual backhand if she happened to be in his way. He wasn't slow, either, to slap or hit her for an imagined offense, to take his belt to her for something he considered more serious. A strip of kindling on rare occasion. But the beatings had never lasted this long, nor had they been conducted with such systematic brutality.

Freya honestly wasn't sure how much more she could take. She'd already fainted once, and he'd revived her with a bucketful of horribly cold well-water. But she hadn't yet told Padlow any more than he already knew, nothing to give his suspicion justifiable grounds.

For the last half-hour or more she'd been repeating, begging, "I can't tell you any more," while Padlow cursed her for being useless and stupid. But she was sure he wasn't through with her yet.

For the first time since the morning she'd woken to the knowledge and shame that Padlow had lain with her to make her his wife, Freya thought of escape. Leaving the hut and returning to town, avoiding discovery for a few days, was that any different than keeping the table between her and Padlow when he was drunk, or shifting silently in the bed so his groping hand wouldn't fall upon her before he fell back asleep, or remaining in the cellar until he'd forgotten his temper? Perhaps the right thing for her to do this time wasn't to endure silently and try to forgive, but to remove herself as if she were the cause of Padlow's temper.

Voices came to her, more clearly as the pain began to recede from her head. The door latch hadn't caught when Padlow slammed it, but had rebounded back a few inches. She leaned forward slightly and concentrated. Reeve Whatley was speaking; she could only make out a few words.

"Stranger… rode out… other… nowhere… trouble?"

And Padlow's more distinct growl, "We'll be waiting for them if they come. Did you see Burton as you were coming out?"

Freya couldn't make out the reeve's reply, but she was already shivering from Padlow's words. Merlin had ridden out of Emmett's Creek, and Burton was somewhere along the track between town and the cabin, ready and waiting. Freya was sure he wouldn't be standing in the middle of the path with a casual turn-back warning.

Burton was safe to bet on at darts; if Merlin didn't have a blade in his chest before he felt it, he'd have one in his back. Her escape, then, wasn't merely to save herself further pain and injury. She might be the only one able to save Merlin's life.

There was the door, and Padlow and the reeve in the dooryard. Freya stood, and stumbled a step before she caught her balance. Maybe she could slip outside, around the hut, and into the trees, before they noticed.

She reached the door at the same time as Padlow, returning. His smile was flat, nasty.

"Going somewhere?" he drawled. She backed up two paces, collapsed again on the edge of the bed, her heart in her throat. "Whatley says he saw the young stranger riding east out of town," Padlow continued. "Riding slow. Where'd he be going?"

East was a relief, a temporary reprieve. Whatever else Merlin intended, at least he wasn't riding straight into an ambush.

"I don't know," she answered.

He slapped her viciously, hard. He wasn't going to let her go, not this time. If she believed Merlin was coming – sooner or later – then the only thing left for her to do would be to make Padlow believe himself safe, and call Burton off guard duty.

"Maybe he's leaving Emmett's Creek before winter sets in," she suggested. Speaking with swollen lips hurt.

Padlow scowled, spread meaty hands along his hips. "Why'd he be wanting to do that?" he demanded. "We already know he's playing some game here, and it ain't played out, yet."

She shook her head hopelessly. "I don't know," she repeated in a whisper. "Maybe he's not interested in tax collecting, after all." She figured if she spoke in suggestions, it would be as bad as telling an outright lie… but to save a life.

Padlow pondered the possibility a moment, shook his head. "No, Burton and Whatley both say the strangers are partners. And Whatley saw my journal-book in the other one's saddlebags."

"Maybe he was mistaken about what he saw," Freya offered timidly.

The scowl deepened over a glance to the empty mantel. "The journal's missing," he said in dark triumph. "Can't deny that."

"Maybe Burton lost it," she ventured, amazed at her own boldness.

"Burton don't read," he mocked her. "What would he be doing taking it anywhere? Besides," he remembered then, "Burton said the young stranger told him straight out they had the book and were gonna take the business for themselves."

Freya thought fast. She didn't know what Burton was alluding to, but it made sense for Merlin and Arthur to want Padlow and Burton to believe they were renegades themselves, at least until the time came for arrests.

"Maybe they changed their minds and decided it wasn't worth it," she invented. "The one stranger never found a steady job, and the younger one's is ending because Elyan's helper is recovering enough to work again. Maybe they just decided to move on before winter. Maybe they argued, and split up."

Padlow moved restlessly about the cabin; she could tell that her suggestions were causing him to rethink his course of action. He stopped before her, scrutinized her under heavy brows, while she tried not to cringe too obviously. His large right hand shot out to grab her left forearm, and he raised her to her feet with that grip.

"And maybe you're just trying to throw me off my mark," he spat. "Maybe you're just trying to set me up so I won't be ready when your lover comes calling. Maybe you were thinking to cut my throat yourself tonight, so you could go with him." His fingers parted around her wrist just enough for his other hand to reach down her sleeve and withdraw the small blade Percy had given her from its sheath. "Sorry, gal," he said, mocking the struggles her terror had renewed. "Didn't work."

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin's attention was caught by a rider emerging from the tree cover at the west end of town. Bringing the glass up to his eye, he followed the rider trotting toward Emmett's Creek. He noted the mousy brown color of the mount, the rider's weather slicker, and knew him for the reeve.

That confirmed two things – firstly, that the reeve had ridden to report Merlin's departure to Padlow. And secondly – with both him and Arthur gone from town, Burton would not have been left behind twiddling his thumbs while the reeve made the trip, therefore Burton was not in Emmett's Creek. He might be at the hut with Padlow, but it was more likely he was lying in ambush between the hut and town.

Merlin figured he could approach them from the north, which they wouldn't expect.

Burton might hold his position all day and maybe through the night, if they did nothing, and the reeve would have nothing further to report until Arthur's return, which wouldn't be for a few hours yet. Whatley might or might not try to confront Arthur himself, but Arthur could deal with that, both physically and officially.

He would circle the hut and come at Burton from behind. With the trapper secured and left by the road, he could then take his time at the hut, separating Freya from Padlow when the opportunity arose without worrying about the murderer's partner. Then he'd have the assurance of an uninterrupted fight, of a single foe in front of him to focus on. It was a good plan, a solid plan.

Merlin snapped the glass shut, shoved it into his saddlebags, and mounted.

About a half-mile from the hut, Merlin left the nag covered by the extra blanket to protect it from snow and cold, and continued on foot.

He kept a small slim blade balanced in his hand as he made his way silently forward, to throw if need be. He expected Burton would be watching the track south toward town, but there was no point rushing ahead heedlessly.

The barest breath of air stirred, just enough to swirl the falling flakes of snow. There was no sound save the slight rustle of fallen leaves under Merlin's boots, but even that was muffled by the thickening layer of white.

After what seemed only moments, Merlin could see the horizontal stack of logs that was the back wall of the stable behind Padlow's hut. He angled his approach slightly to keep the structure between himself and the hut, even though there were no windows. His eyes roved constantly, and he paused often. Burton would attack as soon as he sighted him, so he might have little warning of that, but at least he could be sure that if his progress went unchecked, his presence remained unknown.

He circled the stable to the right, crept along its wall, and paused again.

The two horses inside shifted restlessly, sensing him, but didn't make enough noise for those in the hut to hear or be alarmed. There was the wagon, emptied and left uncovered, receiving the drifting load of snow falling. Between the wagon and the hut was a low slanted door that led, Merlin assumed, to an underground cellar.

He watched for a moment; snowflakes landing soundlessly all around. He was aware that his fingers were cold, his nose and the tips of his ears. And in the silence of the snowy wood, he could hear – something. Voices? A low murmur, where no streams flowed anywhere for miles. His head turned, attempting to catch the direction of the sound he heard.

Voices from the hut, he decided. Likely Padlow and Freya. He moved closer across the bare yard between stable and hut, pressed himself against the rough bark of the log wall, just behind the rise of the cellar door.

The hut had not been well-made, and Padlow's unexpected arrival meant that no one had yet stuffed the chinks between the logs against the coming winter's cold. Still, the wall was thick enough that though he distinguished two male voices, he couldn't make out the words.

He took a wide step over the cellar door and edged to the corner of the cabin. One quick glance told him that no horse was waiting for its visiting owner, so he could conclude with reasonable certainty that it was Burton who had joined Padlow in the hut; at least he would not have to venture down the track to incapacitate the trapper, but now he faced both at once. Merlin listened another moment as attentively as he could, but could gather no verbal indication of Freya's presence.

Now, what?

If he called out, they could use her as a shield against him. If he broke the door down without warning, the same was true, and he'd lose precious seconds in scanning the room for his targets, leaving himself open to their attack in that time.

He needed some distraction, some way to make them leave the hut without alerting them to his presence. He took a step backward, and his bootheel landed against the side of the cellar door.

Merlin had matches in his pocket, and it would be, he figured, justice for the damage done to Gaius' office. He could start a fire in the cellar; that would bring all three of them out in a hurry, and he could disable the second man out, knock him unconscious to focus first on the other. It didn't really matter in the long run which was which – both would fight him and possibly to the death.

He tucked his blade back down his boot, silently slipped open the latch, and pulled the slanted door of the cellar carefully upward. He wanted no creaking of unoiled hinges to give him away, so he lifted the wooden slab slowly, laid it back gently on the ground. Then descended the earthen steps quickly.

The thickness of the trees surrounding the hut and the waning afternoon light kept the cellar in gloomy darkness. And the fire – or lamplight – that filtered between the uneven planks of the floor overhead was not enough to see by clearly. Merlin stopped to let his eyes adjust, remaining motionless so he wouldn't knock anything over to alert those above. The planks of the floor weren't nearly as thick as the walls, and he could now make out Burton's voice.

"Too cold to wait out there with nothing to show for it," he grumbled. "No one came but the reeve, anyway."

The impenetrable gray resolved gradually into shapes around Merlin. A crate here, a cask there, a row of shelves built into the wall to the left intended for rows of canned or dried goods.

"Burton, you're a thick-headed toad," the second voice said, gruff and grainy. Merlin's spine chilled in a slow downward line; this was the first time he'd heard the murderer's voice. "Don't know who's coming down the track, now. Could be anyone, and here before we know it!"

"Well, you go out then. You can sit in the snow and wait," Burton continued sullenly. "It's a good thing I came back when I did, anyway. You'd have killed her if I hadn't come back when I did."

"What business is it of yours if I did?" Padlow returned. He coughed harshly and spat.

As Merlin moved forward, part of his mind registered that they were talking about Freya, even as he scanned the room for kerosene, a crate to use for kindling. Then a bundle of rags in the far corner shifted slightly, and Merlin approached in a silent horrified rush.

Freya was not in the cabin, then. She'd been locked beneath it.

His hand found her mouth swiftly, covering it, stifling a moan. He leaned forward until his lips brushed her ear. "Make no noise," he breathed. "Make no noise."

He couldn't tell if she understood him. _You'd have killed her_ was serious enough, coming from Burton. There wasn't enough light for him to check her injuries there; they were too exposed to try to talk to each other, if she were capable of it. He could no longer light a fire to smoke the two men out, not leaving her down there, and without knowing the extent of her hurt, he didn't want to gamble that he had the time – or the ability - to break down the door and kill or disable both men before seeing to her.

If he wanted her to live, if he wanted her to have a chance at it without further risk, he had to let his revenge slip this time.


	13. Interruption

**Chapter 13: Interruption**

Merlin found her legs in the jumble of her skirts, slid one arm beneath her knees, kept the other behind her shoulders, and lifted. Her gasp was not much louder than drawing a quick breath, light and frail as an autumn leaf. He could feel the tension in her body; she was not completely unconscious.

"Make no noise," he breathed again, ducking his head near her face.

In the hut above them, Burton whined to Padlow, "If you don't want her no more, why not give her to me 'stead of beating her to death?"

Merlin ascended the steep cellar stair carefully and sideways, keeping his back against one wall for balance. A dozen options raced through his mind – _revenge, revenge_, his pulse demanded. But he could think of no way to get his revenge without further endangering her, and even the few moments he took to consider the problem were wasted.

They emerged into the cold afternoon air; she whimpered and let her head fall back over his arm. She was lighter than he'd expected her to be, and had no warmer outer garment than the old woolen shawl, but that was folded and tied around her waist, giving no cover to arms or shoulders.

Merlin growled in his throat and carried her to the stable behind the hut. His own nag would have to wait; it would take too long to carry Freya that far, and any moment could mean discovery of her absence. His tracks would be easy to follow in the snow, and it wasn't falling fast enough to cover them quickly. Burton and Padlow mounted on the grays would soon overtake them, and even if he reached the nag with Freya safely, he couldn't ride fast enough to reach town before they caught up, if they followed. And she couldn't ride alone, while he went back.

He worked the latch of the stable door with his knee and two fingers, and slipped inside. Saddling would take too long, but both grays wore halters linking them to rusty iron rings wedged between the logs of the wall. He nudged open the nearest stall gate with his boot, and lifted her as best he could over the gray's withers.

She hung there awkwardly, but she didn't slip, so Merlin swiftly untied the horse and led him from the stall slowly and carefully. He returned for the second animal, kept the halter in his grasp as he coaxed both horses to leave the relative warmth of their stable. Then as Merlin mounted, Freya nearly slid off.

He caught her, bundled her up in his arms, holding the second horse's halter in one hand and guiding their mount with the other. He pressed his heels sharply to start the gray moving, but skirted the hut only slightly. The two horses whickered nervously to each other, but made no other protest. Merlin expected a shout of discovery, a thrown blade, at any moment, but they were soon out of sight of the hut with no disturbance. He held the gray to a swift walk, trying to keep the ride smooth for Freya, yet hurry at the same time.

Her head rolled limply back onto his shoulder. He glanced down at her face, and raw, hot anger shot through him. Bruises and cuts gained during a matched fight were one thing – this was something else entirely. He was no stranger to the pain of a beating like this, but for her – for this girl, so sweet and kind and quiet – it was worse than wrong.

Freya's face had been battered until the skin broke open. Trails of drying blood led downward from her lip, her nostrils, several other places, down the slender neck that showed dark bruising as well – discoloration that would only spread over the next few hours, he knew from experience. Her dress was torn, her skin scraped and reddened beneath.

She felt so light, so delicate against him. He ground his teeth and vowed to give Padlow back blow for blow before he let him die.

The snow fell more swiftly in an early twilight. Thick clumps of flakes gathered in the horse's mane, in the creases of Merlin's coat, melted on Freya's upturned face and trickled into her hair and the crooked scarf that covered it. She moaned, sucked in a quick shallow breath. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to raise her head, her fingers fumbling with the shawl.

He gathered her more closely, afraid to stop even to wrap his coat around her – even without worse wounds than that given by a man's fists, he knew it was possible to die from such a beating. He tucked the second horse's halter under his knee, and used his freed hand to unbutton his coat, draw her inside, stretch the edge around her. He could feel her breathing, low and quick, and tucked her head up gently under his chin so his broad-brimmed hat might provide some shelter for her as well.

Merlin swore to himself with every step the horse took, straining his eyes to see the first hint of the town. If only Gaius had stayed at the tavern – he did not finish the thought. He saw the smoke of the chimneys before he saw any of the buildings, though it melded with the gray of the sky and the low clouds, his eye was quick and eager to note the difference.

"Almost there," he murmured to Freya, who did not respond. She felt warm where she was nestled up to him, but the hand that lay limp on her leg, brushed by snowy strands of the horse's mane, was deathly white.

Remembering the watching reeve, Merlin skirted the edge of town to avoid being seen, and came up to the tavern from behind. He slid carefully from the horse's back, keeping one hand on Freya to hold her still, then eased her down just as carefully. There was a fair chance the reeve was in the tavern's main room, waiting for him or Arthur to return, maybe even expecting to arrest them himself, but he'd never seen a customer allowed to enter the kitchen. He and Arthur, being residents, were a different case altogether. He kicked at the door when he reached the back step, and shifted Freya in his arms.

Gwen opened the door. Her mouth dropped open as her brown eyes widened, but no sound came out.

"Move," Merlin ordered, and Gwen jumped behind the door.

The kitchen was empty, but warm and brightly lit. The fire roared and crackled under the huge soup kettle as though someone had just added fuel; the kettle's lid rattled noisily, allowing steam to escape.

"Where can I lay her?" Merlin demanded tersely.

"Is she dead?" Gwen whispered, not taking her eyes from Freya's face.

"No, but I need a place to lay her down, and she needs Gaius – Shasta first, maybe," he snapped.

Gwen pointed out a small alcove room behind the family table. "Her bunk's in there," she told him.

Merlin glanced inside and grimaced. There was very little space in the room itself, and less than three feet between the upper and lower mattresses, which were tight against the wall. And taking Freya through the main room to reach the stairs to the upper bedrooms was out of the question – he could hear the murmur of a sizeable crowd gathered.

"Not here," he said, then nodded toward a narrow door to the left of the fireplace. "That Percy and Shasta's room?" He strode across the kitchen without waiting for her answer. "Get Shasta in here now, then go for Gaius." He kicked the narrow door open, then added, "Gwen – go the back way, and try to avoid being seen."

She nodded, her jaw set determinedly, and pushed through the double-hinged door to the common room.

Percy and Shasta's bedroom wasn't much larger than the other, and had no windows, but the light from the kitchen was sufficient to make out the shape of a bed large enough for Percy and Shasta to sleep comfortably side by side. The fireplace radiated warmth through the wall.

Merlin crossed to the side of the bed and leaned her down gently; she moaned and turned her head. He shifted the pillow slightly, straightened her legs, tucked her arms closer to her sides. He didn't know what else to do for her, but there was a lamp and a small box of matches visible on the dresser in the slant of light from the doorway. He turned and lit the lamp, shielding the flame with the glass chimney.

He had noticed that his shirt felt wet beneath his vest, but he had supposed that snow had collected between their bodies during the ride and melted. It didn't trouble him until he looked down and saw that the wetness was a dark stain on the light brown of his vest.

_Dammit to_ - He spun back to the bed in an instant, drawing the shawl aside. The wool of the garment and the thinner fabric of her dress was soaked with blood low on her left side. He yanked his smallest knife from his boot and began to slice away the layers of clothing.

There was a rustle of movement at the door and Shasta gasped a phrase that could've been curse or prayer. "What're you doing?" she demanded, snatching up the lamp as she rushed to his side. She gasped again, and said, "Freya!"

"She's hurt, probably badly," he said shortly, concentrating on his task. Freya's undergarment was stuck to her skin, which likely meant the bleeding was slowed for the time being. The rest he would leave to the professional. "Gwen's gone for Gaius?"

"She didn't have far to go," the old physician said from the doorway. "I just returned from seeing Alice home. What's the trouble?" He advanced to Merlin's side, then hissed through his teeth. "I sent Gwen for some supplies," he told them, gentle fingers already moving slit clothing aside to help him assess the extent of the injury. "I figured it would be you I'd have to patch up again," he murmured to Merlin, laying his fingers momentarily against the pulse in her neck before thumbing open one of her eyelids.

Freya whimpered and shifted slightly in response. Which both reassured and infuriated Merlin.

"You may yet get the chance," he growled, backing away to let the physician have all the room he needed.

"How is she, Gaius?" Shasta asked.

"Not well at all," Gaius murmured. "The beating was bad enough – she'll have bruises to rival some of Merlin's best – but it looks as though this was done with a knife." His hand hovered over Freya's wide. "I don't want to examine the wound without my equipment and plenty of bandages. If she was stabbed rather than just cut…" He didn't finish the sentence. "But her pulse and breathing are steady and strong. I wouldn't say her life is in immediate danger, but neither is she out of the woods yet. So to speak."

"Arthur hasn't returned?" Merlin said in a low voice to Shasta.

She shook her head without taking her eyes off Freya. "We expect him within the hour, though," she added. "Gaius, Percy gave Freya a knife of her own, to defend herself with. Was on her left wrist?"

Gaius bent over Freya to slide her left sleeve up, enough to show the sheath empty. He shrugged, then went on with his examination of her other cuts and bruises.

"Hope he didn't use that one," Shasta muttered under her breath, worry wrinkles creasing her forehead.

Merlin turned abruptly and strode through the kitchen to the back door. Shasta trailed as far as the bedroom door.

"Merlin," she said, as he opened the back door to a swirling shower of white. He looked back. "Be careful," she said. He nodded once and shut the door behind him.

He took one unsaddled gray and started back along the track toward the hut, not bothering to re-button his coat. There were only a handful of possibilities awaiting him. Either the two had no idea Freya was gone and were still in or about the hut, or they had discovered her absence. Even if the single set of footprints in the snow dusting around the cellar door had been filled, they would still know that she had help, since the door had been bolted from the outside, and both horses were gone. Afoot, it was Merlin's best guess that they'd return to the cabin and wait for a confrontation to come to them, at least until tomorrow's daylight.

It was possible that Burton had been persuaded to resume his post along the track, but Merlin didn't think so. Burton was not a brave man, to face danger head-on, and it was snowing more heavily and would be dark before many hours passed. And they couldn't be sure anyone would come to them tonight, anyway. It was wisest to approach with the supposition that they were both waiting for him at the cabin. And very, very angry at the loss of their woman and their horses.

Merlin didn't feel like trying to act wisely.

He didn't feel like calmly weighing options or trying to guess what Padlow or Burton was thinking or doing. The core of his being was white-hot, his hands cold. He could feel nothing else, was oblivious to the weather. He had seen many things in his life, but he had never seen a woman battered with such deliberate brutality. The one bruise Freya had carried after her confrontation with Burton and the reeve in the street was nothing to what she had endured this day.

And meanwhile, he had been riding the countryside around town, strategizing. At least if he'd gone charging in without worrying about endangering himself and risking the outcome, he might have deflected some of the punishment to himself. And possibly won through anyway.

There was a point in a hunt, in a fight, when he could feel the caring slowly slipping, giving way to a reckless void with nothing of any concern to anyone beyond the outcome. He wasn't there quite yet, but he was close. He would approach the hut with wariness, but he would delay no longer.

He didn't know how long the fight might last – long enough to make sure Padlow was dead – but Arthur would return to Emmett's Creek within the hour, as Shasta said, and there was no doubt in Merlin's mind that the agent would ride on to Padlow's hut, ride hard and immediately.

Arthur wanted arrests, a trial. He would stop a fight, if he could.

The slower Merlin rode, the easier a target he would present if Burton or Padlow was lying in ambush, but neither did he want to gallop into Padlow's clearing in a splash of snow. His body was eager, leaning forward in the saddle, his heart beating high and hard; his legs convulsively clenched around the horse to hurry it along. His eyes felt dry from staring, searching the trees, but the cold air moving against him blew tiny drops from the corners.

He reached the hut uncontested. Muffled as the horse's hoof-beats were in the deepening inches of snow, he saw Padlow's tall form slouch from the door of the hut, clearly expecting him and just as clearly ready for anything. One hand was tucked behind his back, the other jammed in a fist in his trousers' pocket. Merlin sent a keen glance around, but could see no sign of his partner.

Merlin kept the horse between himself and his quarry as he dismounted and removed his fleece-lined coat and his hat. He watched the other's shifty, squinted gaze flick to the trail and the trees behind Merlin as if expecting another. Arthur, of course. Merlin felt his lips pull back from clenched teeth. No need to mention he was alone, if this set the murderer off-balance.

"That's my horse you got there," Padlow drawled.

Merlin let the halter drag loose on the ground and stalked slowly across the clearing, cautious eyes on Padlow, but ears ready for any hint of his partner, his hand caressing the leather-wrapped hilt of his long knife.

"Me, I don't see it that way," he answered, his tone almost careless but for an edge that fury made steely and sharp. "You've been robbing folk blind for years, taking far more than your due. This horse, why, this horse belongs to Gaius and Alice, to Percy and Shasta. And Elyan and Leon and Cedric."

Padlow eased away from the hut, sideways to Merlin. "They hire you to come tell me that?" he said, trying himself to sound casual.

Merlin grinned a wolf's grin and moved to keep both his enemy and the door of the hut in view. "No one hired me," he said. "We have unfinished business, you and I."

Padlow's eyes narrowed, and his foot caught momentarily on a stick or root hidden under the snow. "Don't know you, stranger," he said, more cautiously. His left hand was still in his pocket, his right concealed behind his back, but if he did have a knife to throw, Merlin counted on his ability to dodge it, then have the advantage. Padlow added, "Don't recall ever seeing you before."

Merlin barked out a short, bitter laugh. "No, you surely haven't," he said, shaking his head. "Things might've gone much differently that day if I'd been there for you to see."

It would have been difficult for a stupid man to mistake his meaning and miss the threat, and Padlow was not a stupid man. He paused in his circling, clearly trying to figure Merlin out, clearly doubting the assumption that Merlin was a random thief or blackmailer.

Merlin laughed again, a little maliciously. "Thinking back now, aren't you?" he taunted. "But there are so many memories to choose from, so many enemies you've made. What was it you did that brought me here, hunting you down?"

"Who are you, stranger?" Padlow said, dropping any pretence. Merlin sensed wariness from his adversary, but not fear. It had been a long time since anyone had stood up to Padlow's face, he guessed, but he still trusted his ability to best Merlin. "Where are you from? Are you another shire's reeve, or an agent?"

Not a chance would he reveal his identity until he was sure of the kill. That knowledge was a weapon for Padlow, pointed already at his heart. Merlin smiled flatly, said nothing.

Unexpectedly, Padlow whistled, loudly and shrilly, starting the horse two or three steps to the side. A signal to Burton, possibly – but was he hidden, waiting and watching, or was that a call to return? Or perhaps Padlow was only trying to spook Merlin? The hut seemed empty…

He couldn't risk it, not knowing. He sent a quick glance around him, and in that instant Padlow's right arm moved, flashed forward, and a bolt of steel silver light left his fingers. Merlin twisted away, his head jerking to his left, followed by shoulder, arm, and body. And before he had time to regain his footing, his balance, Padlow sprang forward, face dark with rage and hate, transferring a new blade from his pocketed left hand to his right.

Merlin let the momentum of his reaction spin him in a full circle, planting his feet in a solid stance, crouched slightly to lower his center of gravity, the long knife from his belt balanced lightly in his hand. Not enough time to throw and draw another up from his sleeve or down his boot, but Padlow's rush gave him no time to react to Merlin's swift arming.

The murderer crashed into him, taking them both down to the frozen ground. Merlin pivoted as he fell, and was successful in keep Padlow's blade away from himself, though it was more awkward than unarmed wrestling. He managed to land on his back and shoulder, and rolled, transferring Padlow's weight past him. Padlow landed even more awkwardly, face down in the light dusting of snow covering the ground.

Padlow's tactics had been threats of violence backed by midnight attacks on possessions or property, daylight intimidation of vulnerable family members. He outweighed Merlin and had as much as two inches more height; he was older and more experienced, yet Merlin judged himself the tougher of the two physically, due to his preparation for the fight. Though Padlow might have numbered more physical altercations during the course of his life than Merlin, his were more recent. He had the advantage of desperate and determined hatred, too.

As they landed, Merlin swung his knife, but Padlow kicked at him, scuffing up snow and dead-leaf debris, his bootheel even glancing off Merlin's cheekbone. Merlin slashed back repeatedly, but the thick leather of the boots protected the other. He gathered his legs beneath him, and Padlow turned to lunge from a kneeling position, knife held in a stabbing grip.

He descended on Merlin, who fought back as wildly as he ever had. Padlow struggled to bring his superior weight and position atop Merlin to his advantage, but Merlin was too quick, his use of knees and elbows too effective. Merlin threw Padlow off and rolled away, feeling only distantly the sting of his opponent's blade piercing his vest and shirt across his back and the back of his upper left arm.

They faced each other in a crouch once more, catching their breath, each waiting for the other to make a move, mirroring his slow circling to the left. Merlin squeezed the leather-wrapped hilt of his hunting knife, felt the cold air stretch his lungs, and hated with white-hot rage.

The only warning he had was the sudden shift of Padlow's eyes.

Merlin spun, dropping to one knee, his right hand already drawing his knife over his shoulder in readiness to throw. Burton was less than ten yards away to the east of the hut, and the suddenness of Merlin's reaction caught him off guard. His throw was slightly delayed, his aim not quite tracking Merlin's shift in position. The knife clipped Merlin's shoulder as it whirled past, but not enough to spoil Merlin's own throw, which was a straight-line cast like that used in darts, with no revolution of blade over handle.

Killing Burton had never been a goal for Merlin, though he'd been ambivalent about the trapper's survival in a situation like this, but Merlin never had a chance to consider. The blade left his fingers almost of its own accord, and found its resting place in the soft flesh at the base of the trapper's throat. He gurgled softly in mild surprise as he fell.

Merlin turned back on his right knee, fumbling in his boot-top for another weapon, but the side of his knee ground against the sharp point of an unseen rock under the snow, and his leg collapsed under his weight.

If it hadn't, Padlow's outstretched blade might have taken him just under the breastbone, angled upward to the heart. As it was, the knife stabbed between his body and his arm, and Padlow's bulk slammed him into the ground.

_This is it_, he thought fatalistically. He would die. He had failed.

Yet still he fought.

His right leg was twisted beneath him, his left trapped outstretched where he could not reach the blade in his boot. A shard of pain exploded in his knee, and his left hand reached out to grasp the wrist of Padlow's knife hand, simultaneously driving his right hand in a hard fist into the pit of the other's stomach. And again, and again. Every heartbeat he expected the cold certainty of Padlow's steel, but every blow he delivered was an answer for the wounds torn in his father's body, the bruises on Freya's face.

And he'd never give up.

He felt a scream rip from his lungs, felt his fingernails sink into the flesh of Padlow's wrist, and his own palm. He strained forward, upward – he'd grind his teeth through the murderer's windpipe if he had to. Padlow's left hand was fumbling at his own throat; he snarled and snapped and writhed under his opponent like a wild thing. He could feel his heartbeat thundering through the earth beneath his back. He could hear Padlow cursing; he brought his left knee up blindly against the other's body.

Padlow reared back at the blow, pulling his knife back and extending Merlin's arm where he still gripped the wrist, weakening his hold. Merlin tried to kick up at him again, desperate not to receive a seriously debilitating wound before he could inflict the death blow that obsessed him. Padlow wrapped both hands around his knife hilt, driving down into Merlin's body with all his strength.

The memory of an old tactic taught him by Gwaine flashed through his mind, and Merlin abruptly pulled the knife toward him. The reversal of the force he exerted on Padlow's weapon allowed him a minimal control, and he sacrificed a small wound in the skin of his upper arm to cause Padlow's blade to skitter uselessly across the frozen earth. At the same time, he reached into his vest and pulled another knife, not three-quarters the length of Padlow's.

They struggled, grappled, slashed, fell to roll away and rise again. Merlin managed a stab at Padlow's momentarily vulnerable left side, only to feel the blade turn ineffectively on a rib. They were both bloodied, both winded, and still they struggled.

Then Padlow closed with him in a feint; Merlin recovered from his involuntary reaction to the move, but Padlow kicked viciously at the side of his right knee. As his leg buckled, he pushed forward off the ball of his left foot, knocking Padlow to the ground. They rolled and the murderer's weight was finally an advantage as he pinned Merlin beneath him.

Merlin buried his smaller blade in Padlow's left thigh, and the murderer threw his head back to scream.

And into Merlin's field of vision swung a thick length of tree branch, bark dusted with snow. Snow that shook free as the branch crashed into the side of Padlow's head, and filtered down into Merlin's face. Padlow tumbled across Merlin's left leg and side with the bonelessness of a sack of flour or potatoes, out cold.

Merlin never even looked to see who the wielder of the log club might have been. He rolled and scrabbled in the snow for the knife last in Padlow's grasp.

"Don't do it!" a voice rang out. Arthur's voice.

Merlin swore, still feverishly searching for the weapon. He didn't care if he had to stab Padlow while he was unconscious, kill the murderer without ever reminding him of his crime, declaring payment exacted. Arthur was putting a stop to the fight. Arthur wanted an arrest, a trial. Arthur would never let him –

The log clunked across the back of his own head, sending him down for a mouthful of snow and a scrape of his chin along the ground. He fought the darkness, fought to regain the ability to move, to control his movements. His fingers shuffled nervelessly through the snow and dirt. He could retrieve his own knife from Padlow's thigh, he thought groggily, use it again –

A boot planted itself in his side, rolled him ungently to his back. The late afternoon light was dying swiftly, but the man standing over him – log swinging from one hand as the other balled in a fist on his hip – was clearly the agent.

"Damn you," Merlin said thickly; his tongue was slow to recover from the blow to the back of his head.

"You can thank me later," Arthur said sardonically. "Is that your blood?" He indicated the red stain across the front of Merlin's vest.

Merlin was too dazed to explain, and just shook his head.

Arthur continued, "I wouldn't care either way if he killed you or not. I don't give a damn for your life. Killing you would have been another crime for him to answer for, no more and no less. But I have a job to do, and my oath given on how I'll go about it. I'll take this one back to Camelot for trial, and you'll honor our agreement and go with me." He leaned closer, and Merlin saw ice-hardness in his blue eyes. "Or, so help me, I'll kill you myself right here and be entirely within my rights, given our history." Merlin blinked and Arthur's left hand held a blade of its own like it knew exactly what to do with it.

By the laws that governed the rights of vengeance, Arthur could sink his knife into Merlin's side and leave him there bleeding in the snow. There was never a better chance for the agent to have his own revenge. Yet Arthur was waiting for Merlin's decision, showed no inclination to take vengeance.

Merlin let his head drop back to the ground, startling minute red stars into his vision from the lump the log had left. He stared up into the darkening gray sky still dropping clumps of wet snowflakes. He could find no hatred for Arthur, could not dredge up energy or motivation to fight the man; he deserved the harsh tone, and the threats. Objectively, he knew his odds of fighting Arthur and successfully subduing him without causing lasting harm, then returning to finish with Padlow – who might have regained consciousness in the interval – were poor, especially in his current less-than-adequately-armed state. He could waste strength on Arthur to no purpose, or to the death, or succeed only to fall under Padlow's hand. He'd dealt with Freya, he'd dealt with Burton, before facing Padlow, but he could not deal with Arthur and still reach his revenge, now.

He'd failed.

For now. Perhaps he could find opportunity on the ride to Camelot to kill Padlow.

Arthur tucked the knife back into his belt, still watching him closely. "You going to behave?" he said, but not as if he expected an answer. Beside Merlin on the ground, Padlow moaned and stirred slightly. Merlin hated… but he was so tired.

"Let me kill him," he said tonelessly. "Then kill me if you like." He bent his knee, brought his boot within reach of his hand.

Arthur's grip tightened on the branch, his brows drew down over his eyes. "Do I need to tie you?"

Merlin considered. To have Arthur's attention elsewhere, to see Padlow conscious… "Yes," he said honestly. And could have bitten his tongue. It would have been an opportunity.

A corner of Arthur's mouth twitched. "Get up, then," he said.

There was a coil of twine hooked on his belt, and he dropped the log to cut a length of it as Merlin struggled to his feet. He motioned for Merlin to turn his back, and whistled between his teeth when he did so. Merlin felt him finger the slit in the back of his vest and shirt, but the pain was no more than a twinge.

"He got you here," Arthur commented.

Merlin shrugged, crossed his wrists at the small of his back. "It's not bad," he said. He set his gaze on the bare skeletal trees laced with white, beyond the stirring form of Padlow, beyond the motionless deerhide-clad form of Burton.

Arthur looped the twine around his elbows, which surprised Merlin. Perhaps the agent took pity on the tender scars on his wrists… or perhaps he wanted Merlin able to mount without help. Although without stirrups or saddle on Padlow's stolen gray, it would be next to impossible. Arthur's big gelding waiting patiently near the other horse.

"Stand there," Arthur ordered, pointing Merlin to a corner of the hut so he could bind Padlow but keep Merlin in his line of vision, too. Merlin wordlessly crossed the yard.

Arthur plucked the knife from Padlow's leg, twisted a kerchief to knot over the wound, and kicked the murderer to his stomach. Ignoring Padlow's feeble attempts to fight back, the agent knelt on his back to tie his hands tightly behind him. In glancing up to be sure Merlin hadn't made a hostile move, the agent's eyes fell on the body of the trapper. He looked to his knots, but jerked his head toward the corpse.

"Burton," he said to Merlin, and it wasn't really a question. Riding up to the hut, he must have seen the prostrate body, but maybe hadn't had time for a closer look in trying to stop the fight without endangering himself.

_Hadn't been too hard_, Merlin fumed; he and Padlow had been completely engaged with each other, and neither had noticed the agent's approach. "Yes," he said anyway.

"Is he dead?"

"My knife took him in the throat," Merlin said shortly. "He hasn't moved since he went down." He felt curiously empty of regret at the thought that he had killed a man. No one would mourn Burton, and he had reacted instantly to save himself. There was nothing he was ashamed of, yet he wished that the trapper and the murderer could change places at that moment. The first – maybe only – man he killed should have been Padlow.

Arthur pushed to his feet, dragging the groggy Padlow with him, fisting one hand in the shoulder of Padlow's coat by way of support. The knot of the kerchief around his leg was crimson already. Merlin hoped it hurt like the devil. He hoped Padlow would bleed to death.

He heard the hoof-beats a scant second before Arthur did. His head was already turning when he caught the agent's own alertly reactive turn out of the corner of his eye. The sound was low, indistinct. Merlin couldn't determine how many horses approached, but it was more than one, so it wasn't Whatley. They were coming swiftly, and neither he nor Arthur had time to react before the first rider was visible through the trees. Then a second, third, fourth – a crowd.

A posse, if Merlin had ever seen one.

Leon was in the lead on a large-boned black mare, and Percy followed closely on Padlow's second gray horse, swaying a little as he rode it still unsaddled. Cedric was in the group, and Merlin spotted Elyan in the back when the blacksmith lifted his cap to wipe his face with his sleeve.

"Hello, Arthur," Leon said.

There was a note in his voice that made Merlin suspect the apparent friendliness of the tone. Arthur suspected something, too, for his right hand strayed to rest casually on the hilt of the blade in his belt. Merlin, his arms still tied behind his back at the elbows, stepped closer to the group of horsemen. The horses weren't waiting calmly, but tossed their heads and snorted nervously, reflecting the mood of their riders. Merlin's unsaddled gray and Arthur's big gelding both moved further to the side of the posse, sensing the unrest.

Merlin had no fear of them. None in Emmett's Creek bore him a grudge, and a few of these men were even fairly friendly with him. But Percy wouldn't meet his eyes. Cedric backed a huge draft horse out of the crush and reined him around to the side to approach Merlin obliquely.

"Leon," Arthur responded. "What's going on?"

"Came to see if you needed any help taking your prisoners," Leon continued.

He glanced quickly to the men on either side of him, and the riders fanned out slowly, encircling Arthur and Padlow, who blinked and shook his head to clear it, still not fully in control of his faculties. They by-passed Merlin, afoot and bound, most avoiding his gaze but some giving him uneasy grins, as if instinctively amused at his predicament, yet aware that their plans did not admit amusement.

A knot began to turn in Merlin's stomach. There was a feeling in the air, a scent almost, that he'd encountered before, and associated with lantern-lit midnight in the downtown city warehouse districts, where men materialized from the shadows with bared blades to join a streetfight, a riot, to administer mob justice to a cornered wrongdoer. Morgana's lieutenant Gwaine had sometimes instigated these mobs for use as a weapon of revenge, but it was a weapon that could easily turn back on its wielder, and Merlin had always been wary of the absence of a moral brake to the mob mentality.

Percy remained on Padlow's second gray behind Leon, and Cedric held the big draft horse close to Merlin's position, almost as if he wanted the opportunity for a private word with him.

"Burton's dead, and Padlow's arrest is secure," Arthur replied shortly. It was clear he didn't like the position they held him in; he kept glancing at the riders as they slowly surrounded him. "All under control, boys, so you can see, and you're not needed anymore."

"That's not how we see it," Leon said, heeling the black mare forward a few paces. He sounded almost apologetic. "You see, what with all your questioning, and bringing our grudges all into mind, some of us got to talking, and figuring."

"Figuring how?" Arthur challenged.

"Figured the capital's far off," Cedric offered gruffly from his place near Merlin. "Figured we didn't want you risking yourself bringing him in alone. Figured we better make sure of him ourselves, right, boys?"

A low affirmative grumble sounded. Someone called out, "We all got something against him." Merlin thought it might have been Mike of the dry-goods store.

Someone else that sounded like Elyan growled, "Score's to settle."

Arthur raised his voice. "Boys, you know I have authority to arrest and bring him to Camelot for trial, and I wouldn't risk doing that unless I was sure I could see it through."

Leon crossed his arms over his saddle-horn and leaned forward. "We figured, he committed his crimes here, mostly, he ought to pay here, too."

"I don't have authority to be the judge of his crimes, and pass sentence," Arthur said.

Leon shook his head, giving a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You don't have to. Here we all are, ready and willing."

"That's committing a crime, too," Arthur argued. "You'll all be guilty of murder."

"You want to try taking us all in, or making us testify against each other, go ahead," Cedric growled.

"Pay how?" Merlin spoke up. Maybe they'd release him, let him finish the fight and kill Padlow while they held Arthur off.

The curly-haired rancher glanced at Merlin but spoke to Arthur. "Hanging's too good for him, but it sure took care of the reeve, and it'll have to do."

Merlin couldn't care less about Whatley's fate, but protested loudly their plan for Padlow to join him. "No! He's mine to kill!"

Cedric spoke suddenly, angrily, directly to Merlin. "You had your chance!" He swung the big draft horse around so swiftly Merlin didn't have time to react. Cedric's legs weren't long, but he was close enough.

Merlin saw Cedric's boot, the encircling stirrup gleaming in the waning light. He felt the blow like an explosion on his temple as he tried to duck… and the snow puffed around him like a cold thin featherbed as he fell.


	14. Snowfall

**Chapter 14: Snowfall**

A block of ice throbbed heavily on the side of his head, melting slowly down his face, seeping chilly into his collar, wet through his clothes. His face was numb, his fingers chunks of wood.

Someone said his name and the block split open as at a blow, shards of ice driving through his head. Again, "Merlin."

He thought for a moment he should know the voice, know the name to use in his feeble curse, but decided to wait to try to remember. To try anything at all.

"Merlin, if you don't open your eyes and get up, you'll freeze to death here tonight."

Freeze to death. No, he didn't want that.

It was an effort to open his eyes, and when he believed he'd accomplished it, his senses told him he'd deceived himself. He couldn't see anything. He blinked deliberately, painfully, then could make out a dim blur of white against the darkness to his right. He turned his head to try to see the blur more clearly, but it moved as he turned, and his left side remained in darkness.

A shadow moved against the lighter blur, and he jerked back instinctively, upsetting equilibrium. He would have fallen, but he was already on the ground. On the ground, and in the snow. He felt a tug on the twine around his elbows, then freedom.

"That was quite a kick Cedric gave you," the voice continued.

The voice and the shadow were one, he realized, and the name came to him. Arthur. Uther's agent. Here to arrest the man Merlin wanted to kill.

The man the posse had come to claim.

"They took him?" he said thickly, putting both hands flat on the ground to better judge which way to stand up. He felt the light brush of snowflakes against the back of his neck. His vision was clearing on the right; he realized night had fallen and soon it would be pitch-dark. His left side remained already in the dark, and a tentative search with his fingers told him in a flash of pain that the swinging stirrup's blow had swollen his eye shut.

Arthur snorted, a grim sound. "They took him," he answered. "Didn't give me much choice about it. They took our horses, too. We can stay the night in the hut – the fire hasn't gone out – and walk back when it gets light in the morning. Won't be hard to guess what we'll find when we get there, either."

Merlin pushed himself upright, staggered unintentionally into the other man, who shoved him back, not ungently. "We have to stop them," Merlin said. His whole face was stiff, but whether that was from lying in the snow or from the stirrup, he couldn't guess. Didn't matter anyway.

He put one boot in front of the other, shifted his weight, stumbled forward. The dark of the trees and the lighter blur of ground snow tilted, and he stumbled, but each step made the next one easier.

"Doesn't make much difference," the agent said, and there was a shrug in his voice. "They were right that I wouldn't arrest them for it. I'd need a posse myself, and no one would offer testimony against his neighbor to give me evidence. Their wives would all say they'd been home in bed, and Padlow and Whatley must've hung themselves in remorse. No great loss, though it means I've wasted my time here."

Merlin could make out the shape of the hut, a vague warm glow from the door still ajar, the coals from a fire still giving minimal light. They should stay the night there, make their way back to Emmett's Creek in the morning… His sheepskin coat had been slung over the gray's unsaddled back; he didn't feel the cold much now, and he might never until it was too late, but he figured he couldn't die on his feet. He turned toward the hut, put one foot in front of the other again.

Arthur followed, but stopped when Merlin passed the hut and made no effort to turn toward the stable, either. "Wrong way," he said laconically.

"My nag," Merlin answered.

His sight continued to clear as he walked, though his balance was affected by his diminished vision, he could make out his surroundings up to maybe twenty feet around him, and eventually he found the long-suffering nag, shaking snowflakes from its sparse mane. He hauled himself up in the saddle after untying the reins, and draped the extra blanket, damp as it was from an afternoon's worth of snow, around his shoulders before making his way back to the hut.

Arthur waited on the porch, his arms crossed.

"You could come in with me, and not wait for the morning," Merlin said.

Arthur didn't hesitate long. Merlin kicked free of his stirrup, and leaned forward to allow the agent to grip the back of the saddle for help in mounting. Then he turned the nag's head in the direction of the subtly snow-hidden track.

"All this time wasted," the agent grumbled after a moment. "Burton dead and Padlow and Whatley hanged. Uther's not going to like my report."

"You want to take Burton's body to show them?" Merlin asked sarcastically.

"The posse took that too."

Merlin gritted his teeth, tried to urge the nag to walk more swiftly. He'd pushed himself to the limit of human endurance time and again to find his adversary, to feel the warm spread of blood on his hands, to see the last breath gasped, the last look in the murderer's eyes. If there was a chance any life remained in Padlow's body…

He _had_ felt blood on his hands this night.

The thought was abrupt, an about-face shift from his desire for revenge. Blood had soaked through her shawl, had stained his vest. He looked down at the dark smear visible against the lighter material, and rubbed his hand across it.

Arthur caught his movement, grabbed his arm as if afraid Merlin might fall from the saddle. "Are you badly injured?" he said, attention in his voice, if not concern.

"It's Freya's blood," he answered. "They had her locked in the cellar. I brought her to Shasta, before…"

"Before you came back to try your hand at two against one," Arthur finished for him. "If you hadn't, I wouldn't have come in time…" In time to save him, or in time to stop him, did he mean? The agent didn't finish his sentence.

A stitch began to circle around Merlin's injured arm, sweat to trickle down with the tiny melted snowflakes that lighted on his face and in his hair. Behind him, Arthur's breath came more quickly as they labored on through the darkness, and an occasional shudder from the cold.

"I understand why you tracked him down, why you wanted him dead so badly," Arthur commented after a while. Merlin's knees tightened; the nag startled into an awkward jog for a few paces before stubbornly, stiffly slowing again. "Isn't it enough for you to know he's dead?"

Merlin didn't answer. It wasn't enough. It might have to be enough.

But he needed to know, needed to keep pushing, keep trying. There was no one to hold him to account, no client to refuse pay on a technicality. There was no one but himself, and the hate stuck in his heart like a live coal.

The light snow still drifting down from darkened skies had stopped almost entirely by the time Merlin could make out the glow of a handful of lights from town. He pressed the nag to a quicker walk. Despite the absence of daylight, the fading of twilight into the dark of night, the hour was still early; more windows should be lit from within, more lanterns swinging outside homes and shops to light the streets. There was also the complete silence that carried no noise on the crisp night air. Arthur shifted, behind him on the nag.

"There's nothing for us to worry about," he said, only partly to Merlin. "If they wanted to hurt us they could've done it when they took Padlow."

Merlin didn't answer. He also didn't bother to circle behind the tavern as he had done a few short hours before, concealing his arrival. He knew the men of the posse, knew that though they had decided upon swift retribution for their enemy, their good sense and conscience would demand an even swifter return to their homes and lives, maybe even a pretense that they had not been involved.

The tavern's front window released the soft glow of a single candle that said they'd already closed for the night. At the large barred doors of the forge, a lantern was lit, swinging slightly. Beyond it and the moving shadows it threw, another larger shape swung from the signpost of the stable.

Merlin shivered, cold suddenly in his shirtsleeves.

Arthur swore as he drew the nag alongside the signpost. Merlin reached out to the body that hung there, withdrew his knife from just above the rope that spanned the neck. They'd hung Burton's body exactly where Burton had strung him up; if that wasn't irony, he didn't know what was. He kicked the nag into moving further down the street, past the bootmaker's, and found Padlow's body swinging from another signpost.

Padlow's stiff bootless feet, bound at the ankle, knocked the vertical post, spinning the body slightly. Arthur's twine still bound the wrists, the kerchief puckered the cloth of the bloodied pantleg. There was dried blood also on Padlow's swollen face and the collar of his shirt. His eyes were half-open, his expression frozen in shocked disbelief at his end.

Down the street, another form swung stiffly outside the reeve's office. No wonder the windows were dark; no one wanted to look out on the ghastly trio of dangling corpses. Emmett's Creek had gone to bed to sleep away the memory of the night's work, even if only for a few hours.

Arthur reached out and grabbed at Padlow's arm, found the wrist, held and measured for a short moment. "He's dead," he said. There was anger and regret in his voice, and curiously enough, relief.

Once again Merlin's ears were filled with a roaring silence, the silence of a morning in a kitchen where no breakfast was served, no plans for the day discussed. The silence of a sanded, scrubbed plank floor soaked in blood, in Merlin's own blood.

He was lost.

There was no father to guide him, to teach him, to correct him. There was no mother to love him in spite of his moods, to provide the stability of assured warmth and comfort. There were no sisters to tease as a release and cover for his feelings, to look at him with complete trust and shy adoration in big eyes.

He was alone.

There was no future, no goal, no purpose. Only emptiness. The murderer had not remembered and regretted his crime.

A vast void expanded in his chest. He felt the cold like a vise closing him in, squeezing air from his lungs to make room for nothingness, squeezing sight from his eyes, the sensation of touch from his fingertips. There was nothing left for him to hate. There was nothing left.

He let his body lean forward over the nag's neck, his face coming to rest in the rough tangled mane. He heard Arthur's voice as a faraway murmur, felt the agent's hand as though he touched someone else. What did Merlin care if he fell from the horse? What did he care if he died on the street this night, also?

"Merlin!" Arthur's voice snapped. "Get. Off. The. Horse." Each word was a sharp, concise command.

He realized vaguely that Arthur had already dismounted; Merlin leaned to the left, swung his leg over the horse's back. He kept his feet with an effort and a hand on the nag's withers when he landed.

"Go to the tavern," Arthur continued in the same tone. His hand on Merlin's shoulder gave him a little shake, as the agent studied him keenly. "Get yourself taken care of. We can talk in the morning."

Merlin's feet started him across the street of their own accord. At the door of the dimly lit tavern, he paused, turned, blinked his eyes clear. He wanted this memory, this vision, to hold up to himself, to shield him from the nightmare visits from his dead family. But Padlow's body was a pitiful lifeless thing, an empty scarecrow with no power, no passion. No threat, no anticipation, no preparation. He had lived to see his enemy dead.

Arthur reached to cut the body down.

Merlin looked down at the knife still held in his hand, sticky with the blood of the trapper, and let the knife fall to the boards of the sidewalk. Then he turned and entered the tavern.

Gaius was there, leaning on the bar behind which Percy tilted a large mug of beer, half-gone, to swallow from. A small neat glass, empty, stood on the bar before the physician.

"Merlin!" the old man said, and Percy seemed to choke a little, fell into a coughing fit. "We were just talking about whether or not to ride out for you, or let you stay put until morning."

"Didn't want to leave you out there," Percy muttered without meeting his eyes, and coughed some more.

"The nag was out behind the stable," Merlin said by way of answer. It all seemed so remote now, so pointless.

"Is the agent with you?" Gaius asked. Merlin nodded, gesturing loosely behind him, and the physician hurried toward him with an air of taking charge. "Look at the light," Gaius commanded, taking Merlin's face in his gentle wrinkled hands to turn one way then the other, peering into his eyes. "Head hurts, does it?" he commented finally.

Merlin didn't answer.

"It wasn't right, what they did," the old man said softly, and Percy shifted uncomfortably. Probably he'd already had this piece of Gaius' mind. Gaius went on, "Off with your shirt. I'm sure you must have something hidden that needs attention."

When Merlin didn't move, Gaius unbuttoned the vest for him, then the shirt, pulling its tails out for removal. He stepped behind Merlin to lower the sleeves of both garments from his arms.

"Ah yes," he said. "Percy, my bag, please." The bartender set his mug down deliberately on the bar before he emerged from behind it, reaching down to the floor where the black bag leaned against the base of the bar, brought it to Gaius. "Does Shasta still have water hot on the stove? And a couple of rags."

Percy headed for the kitchen without answering or looking at either of them. He staggered slightly as if drunk, though Merlin had never seen him take more than a swallow of what he sold. He steadied himself with a hand on the bar – it occurred to Merlin to pity the big man. It wasn't easy, what Percy had participated in, necessary maybe, but he hadn't the preparation Merlin had.

It should've been _him_, to kill Padlow.

"They stole from me," Merlin said, staring at the plain wall that hid the staircase from view. "Something I can never get back. All I wanted –" He stopped, swallowed, tried to start again. "And now –"

"Everything's changed," Gaius supplied. "Oh, my boy, I tried to warn you. Revenge, killing your enemy, never would have eased the aching of your loss. Uther's laws allow you to seek blood for blood, payment in kind, and you wouldn't be punished for a fair fight, either, but I believe you'd have felt the emptiness and disappointment at that ending, all the same."

Percy returned with a small steaming bowl, a handful of rags. He set both on the table nearest Merlin, and would have headed for the front door but for Merlin's hand on his arm. Merlin didn't grip tightly, didn't feel anger at the big bartender who only flicked his eyes up to Merlin's face for a quick glance.

"I've got nothing against you," Merlin said quietly, as the physician behind him began to clean his wounds. "You protected your family and paid him back. I only wish you'd have let me have him."

"The boys wanted a hanging," Percy confessed. "Wanted for Emmett's Creek folk to see justice done ourselves like we ought to have done long ago, not leave it to outsiders. I knew there would be trouble with the agent, knew you wouldn't want to let Padlow go, if you were both still alive. Cedric said he'd make sure you didn't get the same as Padlow, if you started making noise about it. I didn't know he was going to –"

Merlin cut him off with a quick jerk of his head that set it pounding again. "I'll speak to Cedric myself, tomorrow maybe," he said, and at the look that crossed Percy's face, and Gaius' next to him, he added with a small bitter smile, "It'll be words only, unless he's inclined otherwise."

Percy's mouth twisted, but he nodded. He turned away, but swung back. "Guess you should know, he refused to tell us where he'd hid the money. Maybe thought we wouldn't… Anyway, looks like everything he stole is lost to anyone forever." He turned away again, adding to no one in particular, "Better go help the agent. Guess he's seeing to the bodies so daylight won't have to look on them."

The big bartender wavered through the door; Merlin thought the freezing night air would sober him up quickly. He took a deep breath, let it out.

Behind him, Gaius murmured, "This'll sting," before he felt the sharp hot prick of a needle in the back of his arm and the burning pull of thread closing the wound. "I guess you'll be heading out with the agent in a few days," he went on. "But if you ever need someone to talk to, I hope you'll think of me. We would like to see you again, someday."

Merlin focused on the far wall, didn't respond. He felt the pull of the physician's words, as he had in the old man's office, before he'd left Freya alone there, but he had no anticipated revenge to hold him back from succumbing to it now. There was an emptiness inside, which might be filled with just about anything if he wasn't careful.

Gaius' touch was light and gentle as he finished his stitching. He muttered once or twice under his breath, but left Merlin alone in the end, with a sympathetic look and a hand laid lightly on his shoulder.

Merlin stood a moment in the tavern common room, pulling on the torn and bloodied shirt and shivering a little; his hair was still damp from the snow. He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, or the last. It was over. He was done, and he'd be leaving here soon.

He was surprised to feel a little regret at that, as well.

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Merlin's hand dropped immediately to his belt. He'd forgotten he no longer had an enemy in this world. It would take long to unlearn his reflexes.

Shasta was wearing a house-coat over her night-gown, feet thrust into floppy house shoes and red hair over her shoulder in a long braid. She was carrying a steaming bowl of beef stew; Merlin's stomach growled and he remembered he had not eaten at all that day. She chuckled a little wryly, hearing it in the silence of the room, and handed him the bowl.

"Sit down and eat," she invited.

"If I sit, I won't be getting up til tomorrow," Merlin stated tiredly.

"Freya's resting on the bed in our room," Shasta went on, as he began to eat on his feet, bowl in one hand and spoon in the other. "Gaius said with rest she should be just fine." He nodded, his mouth full. "Percy told me how it went tonight," she added. "I know you were figuring on being the one to end it for old Padlow. I'm not gonna say I'm sorry you didn't, though. No, I'm glad you didn't make yourself a killer."

"Burton is dead by my hand," he told her, ducking a little closer over the bowl, though the spoon rose mechanically to his mouth. He swallowed. "He attacked me from behind."

"That's different," she said. "You didn't come here with a quarrel with Burton, and that sounds like self-defense to me." He shrugged, scraping the last of the stew. She took the bowl from him and sighed. "Emmett's Creek is going to be a lot different, now," she said. "Gonna be some changes made. They'll sell the taxing rights away to someone else off in the capital, and we'll have to decide on a new reeve." She moved away to the kitchen, paused and turned, a twinkle in her eye. "You'd make a good one, if you'd stay."

Merlin didn't answer, walked woodenly to the stair and climbed to his room. The pitcher of water on the commode was far from warm, but he washed thoroughly the parts of him that weren't bandaged, almost frantically, scrubbing as though he would remove his very skin. A new blanket had been laid on the cot and he wrapped himself in it tightly and stretched out.

His injuries made it hard to get comfortable, to find a way to sleep that did not hurt. Memories of childhood bedtime seeped into his mind, the softness of his mother's worn dressing gown, the candlelight shining in her eyes, the brush of her hair on his cheek when she bent to kiss him goodnight. Later memories followed, other bedtimes, two heads nestled close together on the same pillow, dark brown curls mixing, his father's hand on his shoulder as they both stood in the doorway.

How far he had come! To the edge of revenge and beyond. He had never planned for anything, after.

Did he want it, anyway?

Merlin woke hours later, and lay on his cot staring into the darkness. What had disturbed him? Not a dream.

He remembered with clarity the fact of Padlow's death, the sight of his body swinging slightly in the lantern-light, in the snow, head bowed in false repentance by the knotted rope. He remembered Percy and Gaius in the candlelit tavern, Shasta bringing soup. He remembered all this without any feeling, any sense of caring.

No gratitude. No resentment. Nothing. But it seemed to him that there was something he had forgotten.

He heard a whimper, like a little child lost or hurt. He threw aside the blankets and stood, feeling the pull of new stitches and tightly-wrapped bandages distantly. Arthur's snoring from the next room was louder in the hallway, but faded as he padded downstairs dressed only in his trousers. He glanced out the window involuntarily, noticing that the forge's lantern was still burning, though the bodies had been removed from the signposts. Merlin wondered if the men of the posse slept well tonight, if their families had seen the hanged men along the street. He should be furious with Cedric for the lump on the side of his head.

It seemed to him that he heard the whimper again. He crossed to the kitchen, the wood floor cold beneath his bare feet. Coals smoldered in the fireplace, and Percy snored on a pallet spread along the length of the hearth.

Standing just inside the swinging door, Merlin had only to turn his head to see into Percy and Shasta's room through the open door. The lamp was still lit on the dresser, but turned low. Freya's body was a long low wrinkle under the quilt, her face a dark smudge on the pillow. One step took him to the doorway, one glance told him she was alone in the room. She would be fine, as Shasta had said; Gaius had gone home for the night. Shasta probably lay asleep in the alcove bunks with Gwen.

Freya's head turned slightly on the pillow, her feet shuffled under the cover. He stepped closer. The bruising on her face was faded by the dimness of the lamplight, and the blood had been sponged away. She looked very young and vulnerable; a solitary bubble of anger at Padlow rose, then released.

She moved again, restlessly. The quilt shifted down from her shoulders, and the thin straps of an undergarment lay loose on her bruised skin. He moved the quilt back up to her chin, touched the smooth ends of her unbound hair. It was longer now that when he'd arrived and he wondered if she had made the decision to cut it that spring, or if that decision had been made for her. It would be beautiful when it was long. It would make her beautiful, maybe. Her hair and her eyes.

Well, she was a widow now, whether she knew it yet or not. It would take days, weeks, for her to heal, but he was well enough to ride tomorrow. She was surrounded by friends, she had her freedom and her future. She would probably mourn the murderer's death as an obligation.

_You got your wish,_ he thought bitterly. _I didn't kill him after all_.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

It was close to dawn when Freya woke. The first thing she was aware of was hunger, then she turned her head and the tender bruised skin on her face tightened painfully. She licked her lips and winced at the coppery twinge of scabbed blood.

There was a lamp lit on her right; her eyes roved the room and she was surprised to find herself in Shasta's bed. She was sore, she was hungry, but she was warm, and thankful for it. There was a tight feeling around her middle; she remembered tying her shawl with shaking fingers to stop the bleeding she wasn't able to see in the darkness of the cellar. Yet she was here, tucked safely into Shasta's bed, cared for and bandaged.

_I'll live_, she thought, and she was thankful for that, too. She had been rescued by – someone.

Someone had come into the cellar and whispered in her ear, and lifted her gently. Someone's body had been warm next to her in the long cold darkness, someone's arms had held her securely. She remembered the cold scent of snow, and horse, and something else she couldn't name. She remembered her face resting against the softness of someone's neck, the comfort of trusting and depending.

Someone sighed next to her, and the mattress moved beneath her. She turned her head, stretching sore muscles that she promptly forgot when she saw him.

Merlin lay asleep on his stomach on top of the quilt, turned slightly to her. His hair made spiky shadows on his face and his mouth drooped open. The fierceness of his habitual rage was smoothed away, and like the night when he'd smiled unguardedly at her, she thought that he looked very young.

He was undressed to his trousers; she saw the white of a bandage wrapped around his upper arm and his lower ribs. He'd met Padlow, then, and that meant they'd fought. His injuries might have been inflicted by Whatley or Burton, but she doubted very much that Merlin would have allowed himself to be drawn into another fight when his goal was killing Padlow, and she doubted that he would be lying here sleeping if Padlow still lived.

So he'd killed Padlow. The thought refused to touch her, to hold meaning for her. She was warm, and she was tired. There would be time to think about it later.

She looked down at Merlin's hand, lying palm up on the quilt between them, at his long fingers and honest calluses. There was no blood, no indication of violence. Just a hand. A strong man's hand. Even if he had killed her husband, she knew that the fight would have been fair, a lawful avenging of the deaths of his family. She wondered if that meant he was no longer a revenger.

It should have been different. So much should have been different, but it wasn't. But that didn't mean it wouldn't work out, in the end. Whether that end was here and now, or not, was not for her to know.

She moved her own hand out from under the quilt, inch by inch, working against the occasional stabs of pain in her side, stretched her arm down beside him to fold her fingers around his. She closed her eyes for a moment's rest, took a deep calming breath.

And so she slept. And his fingers tightened around hers.

…**..*….. …..*….. Epilogue …..*… …..*…..**

Merlin was seated where Freya had first seen him, at the end of the bar with his back to the wall. He didn't look up when she and Shasta entered the room from the kitchen, and she was struck by the change in him, a change unsuggested by his sleeping calmness of three nights ago. The taut alertness was gone, the fierce and feverish hate was gone, she was relieved to see, but there was an uncharacteristic lethargy in his slouch, in the vacant stare directed out the window. He looked almost gaunt, and hadn't shaved in probably three or four days.

Was this really the same man who'd smiled at her so beautifully, so intimately?

"Merlin, you got a visitor," Shasta announced, but he gave no indication that he'd heard. Shasta cocked an eyebrow at Freya, and helped her lower herself into a nearby chair. "Call if you need me," she instructed Freya, then whisked back into the kitchen.

They sat for a long moment, Freya watching him and wondering if she should say something first, and if so, what? before he turned his head to look her full in the face. She shivered at the emptiness that darkened his blue eyes, the bruising now visible, and felt her own filling with tears. What a pair they made.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice emotionless. "I should have come sooner."

She knew what he meant. "I'm sorry too," she told him. "I should have stayed with Gaius."

He shook his head once, hitched his shoulder in a shrug. "Doesn't matter now," he said only.

There was another moment of silence, then she said, "Shasta told me what happened. I'm glad it wasn't you." She was glad he hadn't been killed, glad also that he hadn't been the one to kill Padlow.

His eyes, still on her, gained a little of their old intensity. "It should have been."

She shook her head slowly. "Your family would not have said so. Your mother would not have said so."

He leaned forward with an abruptness that was more like his old self. "He is dead. It is out of my hands. My revenge is gone."

"So you can find peace," she said.

He looked her over, head to foot. "There is no peace. There is no satisfaction. There is nothing." His eyes slid away, and he straightened from the stool.

"Do you still dream?" she asked softly.

He paused, looked across at her again. He didn't answer, but she could see in his eyes a faint confused wonderment and hope, that told her he hadn't dreamed.

"Why don't you stay?" she said. "Whatley is gone, and we need a new reeve – Shasta thinks you'd be good at it, and I do, too. You could talk to Gaius, sometimes. That helps me when I have a question, or I feel troubled."

He gave a short, mirthless chuckle, his gaze on the plank floor. "I have talked to Gaius," he said, then took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "But I can't stay."

Freya wanted to say, _please_. She knew then, as she'd known when Shasta had earlier mentioned Merlin and Arthur's upcoming departure, that she'd be lonely when he left, lonely as she'd never been during Padlow's absences. She felt a sense of something for him, and _responsibility_ was the name she put to the feeling. Padlow had never needed her, had used her for his wife in many ways, but she had never felt that she owned any part of his life. Maybe it was because her husband had taken Merlin's life when he took his family; Merlin had been too young to inherit and had lost also his father's land and everything they'd owned. Maybe it was because her actions had caused Merlin to lose his revenge, hollow as he might have found it. She felt that she had to take care of him, in some way.

She had to say something, but she worked to keep desperation out of her voice. "Why? Is it because Percy and Elyan –"

"I have no quarrel with them," Merlin said, with a wry twist to his lips. "They were defending their families and livelihoods."

"Then –"

"I promised Arthur." He glanced at her. "You may have guessed that we have a history."

Freya nodded, remembering vaguely Gaius telling Alice that Arthur had gone to take charge of the orphaned boy Merlin. "I heard," she said.

Merlin drew his finger along his ribs on his left side. "The agent bears a scar from my knife," he said. "I have a sentence to serve, and I promised to go with Arthur without resisting, if I could finish this business first."

"Prison?" Freya said, her heart dropping.

Merlin shook his head. "The army. Cadet corps."

"How long?"

"Half a year."

"What will you do in the army?"

"Train. March. Guard duty." He shrugged. "Not much different, really, than apprenticeship with Morgana."

"Who's Morgana?"

"The revenger who took me in after… The revenger I worked for. It was her investigation that got me Padlow's name."

Half a year was a shorter time than Padlow had taken for his trips. Half a year would be late spring, after planting season, crops and orchards green and beginning to show the promise of the harvest, the newborn of the herds gaining strength and courage. It was a good time of year, full of life.

"What will you do after the army?" she said. He couldn't stay, but maybe he could return… "Will you go back to the revenge business?" A lot could happen in half a year. But maybe he'd never forget that she had been her husband's wife. Maybe he could never look at her as a woman. Maybe he'd never smile…

"Maybe," he said. "It never felt as much like home there as…"

Hopefully she whispered, finishing his sentence as she wished it to be, "Here?"

His eyes weren't on her, his gaze directed out the window, but a faraway look said that what he was seeing was in his mind's eye. But the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.

**A/N: Thanks everyone who reviewed, and I didn't get back to in a message! Greatly appreciated! Give me a few days, and I'll post the first chapter of the sequel, **_**The Agent**_**. The first part of chapter one I'll put as an extra chapter here, so you'll all know when that is…**


	15. The Agent

**Part II: The Agent - Prologue**

No one remembered how it started, though everyone had a reason why it should continue. The theft of someone's pig or cow. Or daughter. The movement of the boundary stone at the edge of a field to increase land at a neighbor's expense. The contesting of an inheritance when the wording of the will was vague.

Or maybe the murder of an entire family.

It was two generations old, this feud, maybe three. The retaliations had continued, had escalated, had expanded til few in the whole of Sage Springs were unaffected, and many were involved in violently tangling things further.

Yet one day someone had judged enough was enough. Someone unable or unwilling to exact their own vengeance, someone wealthy enough to make the three-day trip south the Camelot and gain Uther's attention.

Agent Lancelot had been sent some weeks earlier, so the rumor among the troops went. After an initial report on the utter chaos of the situation and the impossibility of one unaccompanied agent being able to sort it, no further word had been received. Neither had the agent returned.

So a company of cadets had been detailed for a peacekeeping mission, three weeks before Merlin's coming-of-age.

His fellow cadets were, for the most part, under-aged orphans like himself, with a handful of petty criminals serving a five-year-or-less sentence, who preferred fresh air and a chance to die fighting to a tiny shared cell with no windows or lights or chances to leave for any reason whatsoever.

For this mission, since the objective was restoring domestic peace, the cadets were issued only clubs from the arms-room at the end of the two-story brick barracks. Two to two-and-a-half feet long, the clubs tapered slightly to a knobby grip and a hole drilled for a knotted leather strip worn about the wrist to keep the weapon handy when hand and fingers were otherwise needed.

So armed, and dressed in uniform hunting shirts and coats, trousers with leather spatter-dashes fastened to protect their shins and keep dirt and stones from filtering into low cheap shoes, and knit caps over newly-shorn heads, packs with bedroll attached slung by straps over both shoulders, they marched three days north to Sage Springs.

And the flowers bloomed, and the fruit trees blossomed, and the fields greened with new crops, and the young of the livestock struggled to life under the watchful care of their mothers.

**A/N: Part II, now begun under it's own story heading, **_**The Agent**_**. Thanks again for readers/favoriters/followers!**


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